Insomnia and Chronic Hip Pain – Shattering the Vicious Cycle

Is chronic hip pain not only ruining your days, but haunting your nights as well? Is insomnia robbing you of the sleep that you need to heal and to manage your pain?

Three out of every four people who suffer from chronic pain such as arthritis are also afflicted with a serious sleep disorder. At the same time, sleep deprivation can intensify musculoskeletal aches, making your hip pain even more severe. Without a good night’s sleep, you also have more difficulty coping with the grinding misery of constant pain.

How can you break this vicious cycle? The first step is to understand the relationship between chronic hip pain and insomnia.

Understanding Insomnia

Insomnia is the condition of not being able to fall asleep despite being tired. It can also manifest as a restless night’s sleep, or waking up far too early. Insomnia can be a chronic or a temporary sleep disorder.

Although a few nights with poor sleep are relatively common, insomnia can develop into a serious sleep disorder. Symptoms of insomnia include shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating or staying focused, exhaustion throughout the day, and muscle pain and aches. The last symptom of insomnia is especially troublesome for people whose sleep deprivation stems from hip pain to begin with.

Insomnia can be caused by a number of conditions, including stress and discomfort, both of which are common in people who have chronic hip pain.

The Effect of Pain on Normal Sleep Patterns

Insomnia and chronic hip pain feed off of one another, creating a vicious circle that is difficult to break. Pain interferes with normal sleep patterns, making it difficult to get the rest you need. Meanwhile, sleep deprivation exacerbates the pain you are suffering, making it more difficult to cope during the day, and even harder to sleep at night.

People who are in pain often have difficulty falling asleep. When you have trouble falling asleep one night, you oftentimes dread going through the same ordeal the next. This makes it even more difficult to fall asleep, which intensifies the worry about insomnia the next night, and so on.

Your reaction to insomnia can also throw off your normal sleep patterns. For example, you feel so tired during the day that you decide to take a nap. When it is time to go to bed, however, you feel more awake than normal, which strengthens your chance of experiencing insomnia.

Chronic hip pain can also contribute to restless sleep and waking up early. Throughout the night, we go through periods of deep sleep, punctuated by short breaks in which we wake briefly before sinking back into the sleep cycle. Usually these periods of wakefulness are very short, and we do not even remember them once we are fully awake.

If we are experiencing chronic hip pain, we become more aware during these brief wakeful moments. The pain makes it difficult to resume the normal sleep pattern, giving the impression that we have gotten no sleep at all. Many times, chronic pain sufferers abandon the attempt to resume sleep and simply wake up very early.

Furthermore, some medications that are commonly used to treat chronic hip pain, including codeine and morphine, can exacerbate fractured sleep, which can lead to the development of a sleep disorder.

How to Break the Insomnia Habit

If the chances of undergoing insomnia due to chronic hip pain sound grim, don’t despair! There are a variety of treatments to help fight the vicious cycle of pain and insomnia and to control this insidious sleep disorder.

Good Sleep Hygiene

One of the best ways to combat insomnia is to follow good habits that promote healthy sleep patterns.

Start during the day, by avoiding caffeine and other stimulants and alcohol. Do everything you can to keep yourself from napping, since sleeping during the day will disturb your normal sleep patterns. If you must nap, make it a quick 10-20 minute rest, and be sure to be awake again by three o’clock in the afternoon.

When bedtime is drawing near, do everything you can to promote a relaxing atmosphere. Make sure your bedroom is not too warm or too cold before trying to drift off. Take a warm bubble bath, or drink a glass of warm milk. Read for a few minutes in a favorite easy chair. Try to put the stresses and pressures of the day out of your mind.

If you have a tendency to think about things that need to be done the next day as you are drifting off into sleep, write a to-do list before getting into bed.

In order to make your bed into a haven of rest in your mind, avoid using it for anything but sleep and sex. Watching TV, reading, or working from your bed can raise your likelihood of experiencing insomnia.

Using Sleep Aids to Fight Insomnia

If good sleep hygiene is not enough to fight your insomnia, you might turn to a sleep aid for help. Use heavy curtains to block light, or try a sleep mask. If noise is a problem, wear earplugs or turn on a radio, a fan, or a white noise generator to mask it.

Sleeping pills may also provide some relief, although they should not be used for long-term problems. While sleeping pills may help you get to sleep faster, they disrupt the normal sleep cycle, which can leave you worse than when you started. Consult with your health care professional before using these kinds of sleep aids.

Another sleep aid that can be effective in combating insomnia is melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that is naturally produced by the body. At dusk, the production of melatonin increases. Studies have shown that using low levels of synthetic melatonin before bedtime can help people fall asleep, without disturbing natural sleep patterns.

Therapy to Reduce Hip Pain

A second way to approach your insomnia problem is to try to manage or reduce your hip pain. A number of different therapies have been shown to help handle chronic hip pain, making it easier to get a good night’s sleep. These include:

Deep breathing techniques
Cognitive therapy
Light hypnosis
Meditation
Behavior therapy

Sleeping in a certain position may also reduce the discomfort of chronic hip pain. For example, if only one hip aches, try sleeping on your good side with a pillow between your knees to reduce the pressure on the sore hip.

Hip Replacement

If none of these tactics helps you to manage your hip pain, you might want to try surgery to restore your quality of life. Pain that keeps you awake at night is one of the signs that doctors use to determine if hip replacement surgery is necessary. This is especially true if pain management therapies and sleep aids are ineffective.

With hip replacement surgery, damaged portions of the hip joint are replaced by a prosthetic. More than 90% of the people who undergo hip replacement recover their range of motion and ability to sleep throughout the night, and are pain-free for another 10 to 15 years.

The combination of chronic hip pain and insomnia is a serious sleep disorder that can affect your moods, your ability to think clearly, and your physical condition. However, with proper management it is possible to shatter the vicious cycle and sleep deeply and without pain once again.

Also see; hip replacement operation.

About The Author:

Sandra Grauschopf is a successful author and regular contributor to http://www.hip-replacement-care.com. Sandra Grauschopf is a freelance writer and internet marketing expert who has been writing professionally both on and off the web for over 10 years. Ever since she was a child, she has enjoyed researching and sharing her knowledge about topics like Insomnia, Melatonin and Sleep Deprivation.