Is Sleep Affecting Your Rehabilitation?

We have all heard the famous saying of "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Many are very familiar with the feeling of needing to pull an all nighter to finish a deadline for school or work. When things get busy sleep seems to be one of the first things that gets neglected however, it's one of the most important things we can do for the overall health of our body.

 Some people choose not to sleep while others are unable to sleep because of stress, pain, or other health condition. So many people suffer from things like short term or chronic insomnia and sleep apnea that leave them feeling tired and fatigued throughout the day. Did you know that sleep deprivation is much more detrimental to health than just feeling tired? Not getting the sleep our bodies need consistently has been shown to increase an individual's risk for depression, cardiovascular disease, and potentially even Alzheimer's Disease. Obviously those are major concerns to overall health...but how could your sleep be affecting physical rehabilitation or your risk for needing physical rehab? One important aspect of sleep is that your body is able to grow and repair your body tissue while in the deep sleep stage so you can recover faster from any injury or damage to your body. While you are sleeping your body is able to send blood which delivers things your body tissue needs to heal and repair. This means that if you are not getting adequate sleep your body tissues are not getting what they need to repair which slows down the recovery process. General fatigue is also a problem for those that are not sleeping and going through some sort of physical rehabilitation. People are already busy plus they are working hard at their physical therapy appointments and they are being told that they need to do their home exercise program everyday to really get better. If someone is not sleeping they are lucky to have the energy to go see their physical therapist let alone do their exercises at home. Doing exercises at home along with being physically active is crucial to getting better following an injury and to preventing future problems. To have the energy to do those things an individual needs to get sleep so they are not constantly tired throughout the day. Sometimes sleep and pain can be a vicious cycle that is hard to overcome. Pain can keep people up or wake them up so they can't sleep and then decreased sleep has also been shown to increase pain perception so people who don't sleep hurt more than those that are rested. Even your body is not injured as bad, the increased pain perception will make it feel hurt so it will feel like a person is not getting better even if their body is. Another important health concern that decreased sleep contributes to is an increased weight gain. A substance that controls appetite is released while you are sleeping and so if you are not sleeping you are going to have an increased appetite resulting in eating more and that, combined with the lack of energy results in increased risk of gaining weight. Excess weight is correlated with a lot of major health conditions and also puts more stress on your body overall. So if you are having trouble sleeping, what can you do about it. There are good habits that can be established known as sleep hygiene that can help you sleep better. Some of these are things like trying to go to bed and get up at the same time each day, using the bed for sleep only, and avoiding caffeine later in the day. One of the best things people can do is avoid screen time before bed. Replacing screen time with better habits such as writing in a sleep journal, reading, or stretching will help relax your body to prepare it for sleeping.
Sleep is often an overlooked aspect of health by both health care providers and the general population. Sleep can interfere greatly with quality of life and limit how quickly an individual can rehabilitate following an injury. Sleep assessments are something that physical therapists need to start doing as part of their evaluations because the amount of sleep our patients are getting has a significant impact on their rehab prognosis.