Those who do not sleep regularly will be interested in that a prolonged night's sleep can not only improve the mood and ability to work during the day.

A new study showed that additional sleep helps to endure pain.

Volunteers who started sleeping two hours longer than their usual rate, after 4 nights of prolonged sleep, showed an improvement during the pain sensitivity test. Participants who slept longer showed great attention and activity during the day.

Researcher Thomas Roth, director of the Center for Sleep Disorders at the Henry Ford Hospital (Detroit) says that 8 hours of sleep is enough for an adult. But if you have to spend only 6 hours in a dream, then you should go to 8-9 hours of sleep per day. This will benefit your body. Recall that the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) USA recommends an adult person from 7 to 9 hours of sleep per day.

Dr. Roth argues that when a sleep-depriving person goes to the norm of 8-9 hours of sleep per day, then his susceptibility to pain is markedly reduced. This applies to all types of pain, including chronic back pain and other types of chronic pain.

A small study included 18 healthy adult patients aged 21 to 35 years who did not suffer any pain. Half spent in bed for 9-10 hours for 4 consecutive nights, and the rest of the participants adhered to their usual regime. Participants from the first group as a result slept an average of 8.9 hours per day compared with 7.14 in the second group, which adhered to the usual schedule.

The researchers measured the pain with a simple test - the participants had to keep the finger at the heat source as long as possible. In the group that slept longer, the indicator increased by 25% after 4 days of the study. Previous studies show that this result is comparable to taking analgesic codeine at a dose of 60 mg (!).

The exact reason why extra sleep can reduce sensitivity to pain is not fully understood. Dr. Roth says that, in their opinion, lack of sleep, like pain, is associated with an increase in the content of inflammatory biomarkers, and additional sleep helps relieve inflammation.

The next step is to investigate how the duration of a night's sleep affects the preparation of patients for surgical operations and the need for analgesics after surgical interventions. This information was published in the December issue of the publication "Dream".

Dr. X. Greenberg of the Jewish Center for Sleep Disorders (New Hyde Park, New York) acknowledges that additional sleep increased the time during which participants could stand the test. But, in his opinion, the use of these data for patients with chronic pain is a very big leap. The study was short, and increasing the duration of sleep for a longer time could give clearer results.

Doctor R.

Fillindzhim of the University of Florida is impressed by how fast was the result of the research of Dr. Roth. He says that this is one of the first studies, during which a modest increase in the duration of sleep reduced the patients' sensitivity to pain.

Doctor M. Breus, a sleeping expert, claims that sleep and pain are very closely related to each other. He says that when a person wants to sleep, he feels overwhelmed, depressed, weak. In connection with sleep deprivation, any type of pain can worsen.

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