HEALTH

Fixed thoughts can cause insomnia & worsen pain

London: Individual beliefs can play a potential role in worsening insomnia and pain experiences in patients with chronic pain conditions like back pain, fibromyalgia and arthritis, a team of researchers has found.

“I won’t be able to cope with my pain if I don’t sleep well,” is the common way patients with chronic pain conditions think, the researchers said, reports IANS.

“Thoughts can have a direct and/or indirect impact on our emotion, behaviour and even physiology. The way how we think about sleep and its interaction with pain can influence the way how we cope with pain and manage sleeplessness,” said Nicole Tang from the University of Warwick in Britain.

While some of these beliefs are healthy and useful, others are rigid and misinformed. Such conditions can be effectively managed by cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), the study added.

Based on these beliefs, the team developed a scale — pain-related beliefs and attitudes about sleep (PBAS) — to measure beliefs about sleep and pain.

The scale, when tested on four groups of patients suffering from long-term pain and bad sleeping patterns, showed that people who believe they won’t be able to sleep as a result of their pain are more likely to suffer from insomnia, thus causing worse pain.

Further, the scale was vital in predicting patients’ level of insomnia and pain difficulties. Current psychological treatments for chronic pain have mostly focused on pain management and a lesser emphasis on sleep.

However, the “PBAS scale provides a useful clinical tool to assess and monitor treatment progress during these therapies”, noted Esther Afolalu from the University of Warwick. The study has provided therapists the means with which to identify and monitor rigid thoughts about sleep and pain that are sleep-interfering, allowing the application of the proven effective CBT for insomnia in people with chronic pain.

With better sleep, pain problems are significantly reduced, especially after receiving a short course of CBT for both pain and insomnia, the researchers concluded in the paper published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

Marital discord vis-à-vis Eczema & Muscle pain

London: Marital break-up and divorce can cause physical ailments – including eczema and muscle pain – apart from emotional problems, suggests a new study.

Around 60 per cent of people suffer physical symptoms, which might include migraine, eczema or back trouble, usually the result of muscular tension apart from stress, low mood, depression and insomnia,” said Charlotte Friedman, Therapist based in Britain.

While Men tend to suffer more long-term health issues after divorce, women are more seriously affected in the short-term, the study suggested. The study showed that psychological stress increases the damage caused by free radicals – unstable molecules which attack healthy cells and are believed to play a part in heart disease, cancer and other serious diseases.

Under duress, the body produces more of the fight-or-flight hormone cortisol, which destabilises the body’s immune system and makes it less able to fight off illness. Numerous studies have identified a link between stress levels and cancer. Health experts attribute these effects to stress and grief.

“High-conflict divorces are also seen as so stressful that they have been reclassified as one of the causes of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition usually associated with accident victims or soldiers in war zones,” Friedman added. Women are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD, suffering symptoms which include flashbacks, unsocial behaviour, heightened anxiety, insomnia and psychosomatic illness.

“Newly-divorced go through the same stages of emotional readjustment as those coming to terms with bereavement – namely, denial, anger, depression and acceptance. Divorce can affect us emotionally, mentally and physically, beyond our expectations,” said David Pastrana, author of the study and Legal Professor based in Arizona, US.

 “Recognising these feelings and acknowledging that you must go through a transitional healing process is a good place to start. Once you have understood them, you are on your way to overcoming them,” said James Lynch, Psychologist based in New York.