More on Sleep and Chronic Pain

Every morning I go ’round the webs and look for cool stuff, moving stuff, interesting stuff, maddening stuff on fibromyalgia, CFS, and any other chronic pain condition that anyone out there might be working on and writing about. One thing I was struck by this morning was the common theme of sleep disturbance, especially in light of the last post here about sleep and weight loss.

Here’s a post from But You Don’t Look Sick (which, as blog/site titles go, is fairly awesome). Who among us hasn’t experienced that creepy, achingly lonely and frightening feeling of being the only one in the entire world awake at whatever ungodly hour of the morning it might be?

At Strangely Peculiar, my fellow fibromite Excentric writes about the incredible benefits she experienced with a (gasp!) good night’s sleep, credit for which goes to Atavan. Let’s hear it for appropriate medication, folks!

And at How to Cope With Pain, published by a board-certified psychiatrist with extensive experience helping patients with chronic pain, there’s a whole page of links to helpful posts to assist you in getting that much needed and all-too-elusive good night’s sleep.

I have my own little rituals, of course, as we all do after any length of time spent living with these conditions. Mine include winding down, turning things off that have glowy screens (TVs, computers? I’m looking at you), a few minutes of light yoga and a few minutes of meditation. Then, I take 2 acetaminophen plus my hypertension meds, and crawl under the covers, fingers crossed.

What do you do to help yourself sleep at night? Have you tried medication? Let me know in the comments.

3 thoughts on “More on Sleep and Chronic Pain

  1. Pingback: Weight Loss » Blog Archive » More on Sleep and Chronic Pain

  2. Rochelle

    Thanks for commenting on my blog today! That meant a lot. It was neat to scroll through a bit of your site tonight as I’m feeling wretched, helpless, and discouraged today… stupid cold!! I’m flaring so badly and feeling so miserable, but resting in God’s promises. I don’t yet have a ritual for trying to get to sleep. I hadn’t really thought thoroughly about this. I guess that does make sense that I should start something like that. Sometimes I’m still in denial! 🙁 But so far I take my Amitriptyline (pain) med 15 min before bed, watch a little TV to unwind, sometimes stretch or read my Bible, and slowly head toward bed. I turn on the purifier, hubby gets the humidifier going, we turn off the lights and talk a little bit, and I too cross my fingers in hopes that sleep will come quickly. Right now I’m sick so it’s a bit out of sync anyway.

    Reply
  3. Sherrie

    You’re so welcome, Rochelle! And thank YOU for returning the favor. It’s so nice when you start a new blog to see a new comment.

    I had a cold myself quite recently and wrote about how the fibro made it all so much worse over at my personal blog. Here’s the link, if anyone’s interested in the phenomenon Rochelle’s talking about – how even the simplest and mildest of everyday ailments can make us fibromites and me/cfs’rs feel SO much worse.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge