Can Sleep Affect Your Pain Level?

Good Mornings with Sleep Well
S2E15

Here’s a transcription for your use:

00:00                                     Good morning and thank you for joining us today. We have some unveiling news, if you haven’t already seen on our Facebook to show and to share. I’m also on our topic today, how pain affects your sleep. We’re not talking just little pains. We’re talking about chronic to severe issues that people live with on a daily basis, um, that prevents them from being able to even go to sleep. So stay tuned and learn a thing or two. Thank you for joining us.

00:32                                     [inaudible]

00:35                                     good morning. I’m Javier and I’m Gretchen

00:38                                     and this is episode like I think like 14 or 15 of our second year of doing this. Isn’t that crazy?

00:45                                     I know, but there’s newness now. Why is there newness now? Our title?

00:51                                     Oh, oh well, yeah, yeah, Yup. We are. So we’re changing from good mornings with sleep. Well because the sleep wall name, we have changed from sleep well to live well. Yes. And it’s a LiveWell mattress and furnishing centers. Yes. And so we’re looking forward to having some videos about that. Um, this [inaudible] this will be the last of the good mornings with sleep. Well and then we’ll just kind of retitle it or reformat it or whatever. But uh, yeah, it is. You’re right. You’re right. I, I, I honestly, to me the title change of the company just changes outwardly. So like inwardly it’s still going to be the same purpose, so yeah.

01:30                                     Yes. Yeah, yeah. We have grown into furniture, so that’s why we’ve rebranded. Just so if you’re wondering, that’s what happened. Nobody’s bought us out. There’s nothing like that. It’s the fact that we have just grown into our, our big shoes now, and we’re no longer limited to only selling an amazing sleep system, but now we’ve added on to all levels of home furnishings.

01:53                                     [inaudible] so, yeah. So, and we’ll have some videos on that. Um, let’s see. So around here, what we’ve really changed, let’s see, we’ve gotten, we’ve had got a new employee in Alamogordo. Her name is Jessica. Very, very, very good employee. Very, very nice. She’s been with us now for three weeks and well, maybe a month now, Huh?

02:11                                     I think it’s been a month once a week for oh, time passes really quick. [inaudible]

02:15                                     but Jessica is fantastic. I hope you guys come down and meet her. Um, see, we have also a really, really, really, really increased our furniture lines and the Alamogordo store. That’s huge. Um, let’s see. I mean, just so much that’s been going on, that’s kind of why you haven’t seen us around since the, I think the respite video was the last video we made and that was almost three weeks ago. Um, if you guys, honestly if you guys haven’t come to see the rust bed, you need to come see the rest.

02:44                                     That’s right. When you say smart, it does it all. There’s nothing that, that bad lefts or left us with having to figure out. You just lay on it and it does its thing. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

02:54                                     It’s, it’s amazing. Yeah. A bed that you control by your tablet or your phone is awesome. Right? So we’ve got that, um, just so much going on. It’s, it’s been a tiring, it’s been a tiring couple of weeks. It really, to be honest with you has, um, and the, uh, the August, what is it? August, September of the Labor Day. We just had, I mean, just so much things happening. It was a busy season.

03:20                                     Yes. It’s been very busy. Yeah. And we’re also working out of our, both of our stores. So our time is kind of split in half between the two of us.

03:28                                     Yup. But it is nice to be able to sit down and breathe with you guys again. So here we are on another episode of good mornings with sleep. Well, so, uh, today we want to actually talk about pain and sleep and the correlation between the two. About a month ago you wrote this really interesting article that just kind of blew me away. Um, and, and I, I knew that pain reduces sleep mainly because pain reduces sleep. It keeps you awake. Right? Right. But then she wrote an article more about what,

04:02                                     well, when people who suffer pain try to sleep, you’ll hear one of their number one complaints. I can’t sleep. So with that, and I have personal family members that deal with this as well. So for me, when I was reading this article, I was kind of sat back into my seat because I was realizing it’s not about just a mattress or the room temperature or your sheets or the support of a mattress. It comes down to your personal health and it’s been proven and it’s kind of a common sense factor that if you hurt, it’s harder to sleep. But when they were discussing this based off of a study, and by the way, if you want to read this, um, it was posted August 1st on our Facebook. So you can read those facts if you would like. Um, but reading the study was really hard to digest because the fact that it, it personally tells you that, you know, painful stimulus, it hits in your neuro systems so it affects you trying to sleep. So when you try to go into deep sleep, you’re not able to stay in deep sleep. So their overall health, um, is hit regarding no sleep, right on top of already hurting.

05:08                                     So the, just the gist of the study is, um, they take test subjects and they, they have half of them sleep the whole night and they take the other half and they cut their sleep in half. And what they do then is they do pain tolerance studies on them. Okay. And the people that have slept the whole night, um, have a slower response to pain than the people that have slept half the night. So they’re, what they’re trying to try to, to correlate or to prove causation of is, hey, you know, if you sleep less, you can stand pain less. If you sleep more, you can stand a little bit more pain. [inaudible] so that study just, I mean, I’d never drawn that. Uh, and, and I mean, and I’m the one that’s deprived himself asleep a couple of times just to experiment. So I, I never drawn that. I didn’t know that lack of sleep would cause you your, the pain to register more. That’s the part that blew me away.

06:03                                     C An and when we think about the common sense factor to all of this, you can read into it saying, well yeah, if I don’t sleep on more responsive to annoyances, um, things that cause more stress, everything is a bit more sensitive. And this was just one more factor that kind of supported that and prove that even with your brain trying to respite it, it’s not capable and it’s firing off all those neurons saying hurt, hurt, hurt, everything is affected in your health range when it comes to pain.

06:32                                     Right, right. So then the other article that we’re referring to is one where it’s more a little bit more common sense, but it also, um, it’s written by the national sleep foundation and what it is, is basically saying that pain can reduce sleep and it’s a vicious cycle because sleep then introduces more pain. Yeah. So it’s, it’s this whole cycle about things. Yeah. Um, and what they go through is actually in the conclusion of their article is do your best to have really good sleep hygiene, which, what is really good sleep piping.

07:08                                     You want to reduce your caffeine intake throughout the day, especially no later than like one or two o’clock. You want to give yourself, what is it, six to eight hour window and your sensitivity to caffeine. Um, you want to make sure that your room temperature is ideal. You want to make sure that your environment is quiet or however it is that you comfortably sleeps. And people are like the noise of a fan. Um, but you’re trying to prevent, um, things from complicating your sleep environment or preventing you from going into sleep and staying asleep,

07:37                                     right? So even if you’re in a pain mode or whatnot, you can help yourself by trying to increase your sleep because sleep is recovery. But on top of that, sleep also is now showing that sleep can reduce your pain or actually improve your pain tolerance. Um, uh, what you said about caffeine I think is key because that’s, I think that’s where so many people fall victim thing. Two things is they, they, they forget that, hey, if I drink caffeine past four, I’m not going to be able to sleep til midnight or I’m not going to be able to sleep till 10. And yes, there are doubters that say, oh, I can drink an energy drink at four o’clock or at six o’clock and sleep just fine. No, you can, you just can. Um, what happens is you fall into a very light sleep, which is not a recovery. Sleep recovery, sleep and the lights sleep are totally different. Same with alcohol. Exactly. Same with alcohol. Um, you may think that you’re sleeping well with alcohol, but you’re actually not, you’re actually never reached the rem cycle. You never actually reached the, the, the rem cycle. You’re, when they say you’re passed out, you’re passed out. Yes, yes. Yeah. So, so, yeah. So just keep that in mind. Sleep hygiene. Um, the other thing you said is keeping the room at a super set at a certain temperature. What, what is the ideal temperature?

08:59                                     Well, for me,

09:03                                     yeah. Yeah. [inaudible]

09:04                                     72 to 75 degrees. Um, I believe the average person was at 67 degrees,

09:11                                     67 to 72. Okay. But she likes it super warm. Uh, yeah.

09:19                                     You get to the point where he said that I’ve actually woken up and I’m on the edge of the bed and you’re like burrowed under my back. And I’m like, well, you know, I’m asleep. I don’t realize it, but I’m looking for warmth.

09:29                                     So yeah, during, during the, during the winter she has, she has a tendency to try and crawl underneath me so that way she can sleep under me. He’s a blanket. Yeah. I’m like the heater. But anyways, back to the topic. So yeah. So sleep hygiene, um, also little, little things that you can do to, to help you sleep better. Um, uh, there’s foods that, uh, that you eat that actually can affect your sleep. Um, one of the ones that hurts you the most is chocolate, which that to me is like, it’s blast for me. It totally is. I think it’s worth messing a little bit of sleep. It’s, it’s blasphemy to think that chocolate affects you in a negative way.

10:11                                     Well, I have to say as of night before last, I can confirm the fact I cannot eat pork for dinner because it disturbs my sleep. I have these very crazy dreams. I’m usually very action packed end in color yet I can’t recall all details. Um, but it also prevents me from just going to sleep and staying asleep. I’ll go to rollover and I’ll wake up and then it takes me like 15, 20 minutes just to turn my mind off to even try to go back to sleep. So whatever pork does to me, it’s not nice. So pork is not my friend before dinner.

10:45                                     So that’s off our list for dinners. Yes. Yes. It’ll be on our list for lunches because I love pulled pork. So yeah, there, there are great dishes with work. It’s just not a dinner meal from them anymore. So chocolate and then there’s like pork for some people. Um, what else is there? There’s a teas. Don’t drink teas that treaties have, have caffeine as well, or decaf coffee. Did you know decaf coffee actually has a 25% coffee. Uh, our caffeine in it, like 25% of the actual, that’s that, that is where the label decaffeinated it actually starts.

11:18                                     Oh, wonderful. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think it’s, it’s gotta be said though, it’s the same of anything that’s pure. You can only take so much of a situation out of it. Yeah.

11:26                                     Yup. Exactly. Exactly. So, um, and then so sugary foods as well, because remember your body tends to want to burn sugar faster, right? So, um, do that. Um, but all in all, it’s just be aware that the closer you eat to bedtime, the harder it’s going to be to fall asleep. Yeah. Yeah.

11:46                                     Cause you’re doing, your gut is working. It’s doing what it’s meant to do. So it’s time to digest and process, absorb nutrients and put things where it goes so it’s not resting. And the whole purpose of rest is for everything to sleep so that your mind can then turn that dishwasher on and clean. So if you’re creating, um, all this extra work in your body before bed, it disrupts it. Same with exercising before sleep, you’re getting everything gone where you may feel exhausted after you’re done with a really good workout. Especially we do a lot of hits, a very good point, but when it comes to rest, your brain is firing all of its Pistons at that point and everything is very reactive. [inaudible]

12:26                                     so, um, and I mean it’s unfortunate because there are so, so many people that are sleeping or that are living with, um, chronic pain. Yes. And I mean, I, we know that struggle is bad, but to make the struggle with sleep happen or make or even make it worse, that’s, that’s the bad part. So, um, yeah, just, just to kind of watch your, watch your sleep hygiene, watch, uh, watch for, to eat, watch what you’re drinking and uh, try to try to make a habit of your sleep habit, sleep times so that way you’re falling asleep at a set time and waking up at a set time so that way your body’s not getting confused. It, it’s been proven by these studies that sleep will help your pain tolerance. Um, and it’s also been proven the other way around. It sleep can cause your pain tolerance to go lower. So yeah, once again, the importance of sleep.

13:19                                     So when it comes down to actually trying to define these people that have chronic pain, this is an aid on the importance of how you need to find realms of sleep so that it won’t create more pain by not sleeping. But for those people that are like that, how do I get to that? Step one, I’m still talk to your doctors, still stay on pain meds if that’s what’s required so that you can function. Um, try not to get into a situation where you’re taking meds that compromise sleep. That right there is a huge little ticker. You need to pay attention to those side effects. Um, but also know that there are other ways of handling as well. I know new on the market is CBD. It’s legalized in all 50 states because they realize that this has happened. Not THC, but the ham actually helps because our brains have a natural endocannabinoid receptor.

14:12                                     So it knows how to process it just like it would have fruit or vegetable. It’s a natural plant. So when speaking to your doctor, make sure you bring up all your concerns. Again, you don’t want to stop taking pain medications. You do want to address your pain symptoms because the prevention of sleep by pain is going to affect your pain even more. So, um, if you have questions and stuff like that for a doctor regarding the CBD as well, those are great questions to ask your doctor. Um, and just stay focused on your sleep health and your sleep hygiene because they are detrimental to the amount of pain that you will feel throughout your life. Yup. And remember for other

14:52                                     sleep tips or whatnot, we do have plenty of episodes of good mornings with sleep. All that have sleep tips, have ways of going and getting into really good sleep habits, um, and tips on everything from health or whatnot. So watch the past videos definitely and subscribe to the channel if you’re interested in getting a weekly update on sleep news and on healthy living and healthy living news, stuff like that. So, yeah, please and remember when you sleep well, you have a wonderful day. Bye Bye. Bye.

15:24                                     [inaudible].