Restless Sleep Can be Painful in Adults

Had a restless night? You might not just have a rough morning. New research indicates that frequent restless sleep significantly raises the risk of developing widespread pain, such as fibromyalgia, in older adults.

The study, published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, shows that "non-restorative sleep" as well as anxiety, and memory problems all contribute to the development of wide-spread pain conditions in older adults.

According to previous studies cited by the research team, widespread pain, the main characteristic of fibromyalgia, effects 10 percent of men and 15 percent of women over 50 years old.

To discover what causes this, the researchers collected demographic data and relevant medical information of more than 4,300 adults past the age of 50. At the study's start, none of these men and women had widespread pain.

But three years later, 800 men and women, 19 percent of the study participants, were found to have widespread pain. While some of this pain was found linked to conditions like osteoarthritis, researchers concluded that the majority of pain was caused by non-physical factors.

Even for modern medical professionals, little is understood about pain or how exactly it is caused. Professionals know that physical harm to the body floods neurons in that region with the sensation of pain, but in the cases of non-physical pain, like with fibromyalgia, how the pain is triggered in the first place remains a mystery.

In the case of the 800 participants, a great majority of them began feeling widespread pain when their quality of life declined, due to factors such as stress and memory loss. The restfulness of sleep also markedly declined in these participants, and researchers found this was directly correlated with a start of widespread pain.

Treatment for non-physically induced pain remains only marginally effective with traditional pain medications, which generally flood neurons in an attempt to overwhelm or dull the sensation of pain. Recent genetic research may have discovered a more effective solution, "turning" off the genes that make us sensitive to pain. However, it will take decades before such treatment is, if ever, available to the public.

The study was published in the February edition of Arthritis and Rheumatology.