![]() ![]() She adds that when she travels a small rolled up hand towel can also do the trick. “The trick is to keep my neck as straight as possible while I sleep so it doesn’t tense up,” she says. When Nancy’s neck is particularly painful, making it so she can’t sleep, she has a small foam neck roll that she places at the base of her neck when she lies down. People think I’m weird when they see my sad little pillow - it’s actually a pillow designed for backpacking - but it’s the only way I can sleep without my neck hurting,” she explains. “I’ve had to change a lot of things since my diagnosis, but the flat pillow has stayed. ![]() Last year she started having neck spasms, which lead her to get diagnosed with arthritis. To keep her neck straight, she slept with the thinnest pillow possible. For years, all she knew was that lifting her head, even a little, caused terrible pain and a night of no sleep. “Sleep problems were actually how I discovered I have osteoarthritis in my neck,” says Nancy B., 52, of Gig Harbor, Washington. We talked to people with arthritis about the tricks they’ve learned for getting a good night’s sleep. Like Lackey, you have to find what works for you to help you get your rest. And your perception of pain may be heightened during the nighttime because you’re not distracted by anything else.īut just because painsomnia is normal and common doesn’t mean you have to accept it. Lying down can cause inflammatory chemicals to pool in the fluid that cushions your joints, which makes them stiffen up. Your levels of cortisol, a hormone that helps control inflammation, are lower at night. The reason people with arthritis are more likely to have sleep issues is likely due to several issues. “It can be easy to forget in the darkest part of the night, but your flare-up is temporary. On bad nights she says she would repeat the phrase “This too shall pass” over and over. “I learned it was important to focus on the positive.” Sometimes that meant reading inspiring stories or meditating. “I would obsess over all the things I did wrong to cause it.” These thoughts only made her insomnia worse. “I remember lying in bed, fearing that I would be stuck this way and worrying that the pain would never end,” she says. Not being able to sleep isn’t just painful it can also feel scary, Lackey says. Then the feelings of exhaustion due to lack of sleep made everything feel worse, turning into a vicious cycle,” says Kimberly Lackey, whose experiences with reactive arthritis and cancer led her to become a therapist and integrative health coach who specializes in helping people with chronic illnesses. “The pain from my arthritis was unimaginable, which made it impossible to sleep. As many as 80 percent of patients will have trouble falling and/or staying asleep, and that’s true for people with osteoarthritis or inflammatory types of arthritis. Painsomnia - the inability to sleep due to pain - is a major problem for people with arthritis.
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