How well you sleep will determine whether you ever fully recover from a serious injury or go on to suffer chronic, life-long pain, a groundbreaking study has found.
David Klyne, a pain scientist with the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Queensland, says it is the first time research has produced evidence of a direct link between inadequate sleep and the development of chronic pain.
While poor sleep affects up to 90 per cent of people who suffer from chronic pain, health practitioners rarely considered sleep as a central part of their treatment.
Chronic pain sufferers also tend to be frightened of physical activity, yet the study found even if poor sleep persists, targeted exercise could effectively wipe out the impact of sleep deprivation.
Presenting his research to a Faculty of Pain Medication annual symposium, Dr Klyne said the research findings coincided with a massive push to move away from the use of opioids to non-opioid treatments for chronic pain.
"Chronic pain affects at least one in five Australians with a significant majority experiencing poor sleep," Dr Klyne said in Brisbane on Friday.
"If you hurt yourself and don’t sleep well, that could well decide whether or not your pain ever resolves."
His study flagged huge potential for new chronic pain treatments, combining exercise programs with sleep interventions such as sleep hygiene and cognitive behavioural therapy.
The research also confirmed the 2022 findings of a 10-year study by Dr Klyne and Professor Paul Hodges, which tracked the progress of 133 back injury patients.
"We knew in the first 12 months which patients would recover and who would go on to develop chronic pain, and quality of sleep was the stand out predictor," he said.
Dr Klyne said poor sleep was a growing problem but if people could not always manage their sleep, exercise might be a powerful way of countering it.
Chronic pain was “the biggest health challenge of our time”, he said.
Yet waves of costly research and treatments failed to address the root causes of pain and amounted to Band-Aid treatments.
"There are more people than ever before suffering from chronic pain and outcomes only seem to be getting worse," Dr Klyne said.
The symposium heard targeted diets were critical for chronic pain sufferers, but it was barely on the radar of treating health professionals.
Physiotherapist Rowena Field said chronic pain sufferers were known to gain an average of 13kg after injury and there was a high incidence of comfort eating.
Dr Field, who specialises in dietary interventions to treat chronic pain, recently conducted a review which flagged obvious benefits for patients to switch to a more wholefood diet and cut out ultra-processed foods.
While Australian dietary guidelines were designed to help reduce the risk of getting chronic disease, they did not provide any guidance on what to eat if you had a chronic illness.
"When it comes to patients with persistent pain, we need more research and better nutritional advice," she said.
The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists has facilitated AAP's coverage of the 2024 meeting.
