Nine Sleep Hygiene Tips for More Effective Chronic Pain Management

I’m often asked by patients and people at my trainings "when someone has chronic pain and addiction, what can they do for sleep problems because they can’t safely take many of the sleep medications." Well first of all I don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to become dependent on sleeping pills. If you look at the patient education information on most sleep medications you will see that it tells you that they are not intended for chronic use.

So what do you do when you live with chronic pain and need to sleep? Do you give in and use potentially dangerous sleep medications or just suffer? Most authorities recommend practicing good sleep hygiene, along with becoming very familiar with their sleep deprivation problem (i.e. understanding the cause). Sleep hygiene refers to the habits, environmental factors, and practices that may influence the length and quality of your sleep. These include bedtime, nighttime rituals, and disruptions to one's sleep. These are typically represented by simple guidelines meant to effectively promote a good night's rest.

If sleep problems persist after implementing sleep hygiene practices, it may then be the time to seek medical help. But what is sleep hygiene? Below I’m putting 9 sleep tips that I found on About.com , a website devoted to educating people about back and neck pain. If you want to see more about sleep hygiene please go to that website and type in “Sleep Hygiene.”

1. Relax before bedtime


2. Make sure your bedroom is quiet, dark, cool, and comfortable


3. Make sleep a priority: don’t sacrifice sleep to do daytime activities


4. Get up and go to bed at the same time every day, even on weekends


5. Avoid caffeine and other stimulants


6. Don’t smoke - in bed or at all


7. Exercise every day, but avoid doing it 4 hours before bedtime


8. Bedrooms are for sleeping and sex, not for watching television or doing work


9. Don’t take naps

I’ve been helping people with this problem for a long time and have actually used most of interventions listed above. One of the tools I also recommend for many of my patients is to use headphones with relaxation techniques, soothing sounds or music to help them to sleep. I also teach people relaxation response techniques that take about 7-10 minutes and one of the positive side effects is a reduction in their sensation of pain.

If you want more information on chronic pain management and sleep problems please go to our website and check out my article Chronic Pain Management and the Role of Sleep Disturbances , that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you're in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To listen to a radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

Chronic Pain Management and Addictive Disorders

According to researched published in Pain Physician Journal as recently as 2006, 90 percent of people in the US receiving treatment for pain management were prescribed opiate medication. Of that number 9 percent to 41 percent had opiate abuse/addiction problems. The research also stated that 16 percent of pain management patients experienced illicit drug use along with their prescribed medication, and as high as 34 percent in other research they reviewed. These numbers give a picture of the overall problem of chronic pain abuse/addiction problems in the general population. What is harder to quantify is the extent of this problem in the recovering community.

Whenever I asked the following question at trainings, “How many of you know someone in long-term recovery who has relapsed over pain management issues?” most of the audience raises their hands. The reasons vary, but more often than not they either take the wrong medication or too much. Others try to tough the pain out and end up relapsing back to their original drug of choice.

Living with chronic pain is difficult for anyone, but especially for someone with coexisting abuse, addiction or other psychological disorders. They can become severely depressed and discouraged. Healthcare providers often become confused and frustrated when their treatment interventions are ineffective and frequently blame their patients. The problem of managing pain and medication in recovery continues to grow and healthcare professionals are left with the challenge of how to effective address it. Given the biopsychosocial nature of addiction and chronic pain, it is imperative to understand both conditions and implement a multidisciplinary treatment plan.

To learn more about the need for teamwork for effective chronic pain management check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people undergoing chronic pain management and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders; including depression, addiction and other coexisting psychological disorders effectively; please consider my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.