Relax, Rest, Recharge: The Connection Between Sleep and Chronic Pain

Dr. Aaron Martin discusses the connection between sleep and pain and how they influence each other: people with chronic pain have poor sleep due to pain, while poor sleep leads to chronic pain. Chronic pain is due to an overactive nervous system while sleep requires the nervous system to be in a relaxed state. There are many ways to approach sleep and rest besides taking medications and, in fact, many sleep medications do not provide good quality deep sleep. Instead, we can re-train the body and brain to relax and allow rest and sleep thus improving pain and suffering.