Find the right mattress.

How to find the right mattress that optimizes sleep and minimizes pain. The relationship between sleep and pain is complex, where they are arguably reciprocal to each other. How does sleep impairment lead to pain, and how does pain lead to sleep impairment? This integral relationship impacts the daily quality of our lives in a biological and behavioral sense. How you sleep and what mattress you sleep on has significant consequences for how this perpetual sleep and pain cycle can finally end. Read on to find out how a good mattress optimizes sleep and can help minimize pain.

How Pain Interferes With Quality Sleep

 Quite simply, pain causes you discomfort which wakes you up, and if it doesn’t wake you up, it at least reduces your sleep quality. According to the National Sleep Foundation, people with acute or chronic pain are significantly more likely to have sleep problems impacting daily lives. The Foundation also says “that environmental factors like which mattress you use are more likely to be a factor for people with chronic pain.” Pain can be considered a good thing though, because it warns that harm is being done to your body, where improved sleep is a natural sign that your body is healing. Therefore, sleep is a key indicator of overall health and quality of life, and prioritizing your sleep life is a number one way to combat chronic pain.

The detrimental effects of lack of sleep

Lack of sleep is detrimental to pain symptoms and can cause them to activate or intensify, especially if the body doesn’t get the rest it needs to heal itself. NIH research shows how the prevailing belief that sleep and pain have purely a reciprocal relationship may not be quite accurate. Longitudinal studies have shown that sleep impairment actually increases risks of developing chronic pain. Neurologist Charles Bae, MD, of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio said, “Sleep deprivation can actually lower your pain threshold and pain tolerance and make existing pain feel worse.” One study shows how prevention and treatment of sleep disturbance is recommended to reduce activation of rheumatoid arthritis-related joint pain. This research contrasts the prevailing opinion that sleep and pain have simply a reciprocal relationship where the two factors should be given equal weight and only measured simultaneously. So sleep impairment and the causes, like your mattress, should often be looked at first.

What to look for in a mattress

The quality and style of your mattress is essential for ensuring proper spinal alignment and pressure relief over time, especially as a chronic pain sufferer. Which mattress you choose accordingly can depend on which sleeping positions you prefer, particularly as relates to firmness or softness. For example, are you side sleeper, sleep on your stomach, or do you sleep on your back? Lower back pain is a common symptom confounded by poor sleeping habits and a poor mattress, so consider the right mattress for you if you experience lower back pain.

While research shows similarities among cases of sleep impairment and pain, this complex relationship is still unique to every individual. Depending on the sleep issues and type of pain you are experiencing, you may treat both symptoms simultaneously or focus on one that in turn heals the other. In either case though, the way that sleep impairment can activate or intensify pain cannot be underscored enough, where how you sleep and what you sleep on is paramount.

by Lisa Smalls