Louis Zantema
5 January 2020
Louis is a GZ-Psychologist with a great passion for gaming. For him, a game training that offers therapy is the most valuable thing you can develop: especially for pain complaints, which are on the interesting intersection of body and mind. His aim is to make himself dispensable as a therapist.
How come sleep can have such an impact on pain? In the previous blog you could read tips on how to sleep better, today I'm thinking about how this works.
Factors that influence pain
The amount of pain caused by the alarm system strongly depends on how you feel, where your attention is, your thoughts and what you do.
For example, if you feel stressed, focus on the 'miserable' pain you feel, think 'this will never pass' and decide not to go for a walk because it doesn't make any sense - you can imagine that the pain will only increase.
The influence of (a lack of) sleep
Maybe you saw it coming, but sleep also affects all these factors. You can be more irritable if you don't sleep enough (or dull if you've been in bed for too long), don't seem to be able to keep your attention on anything, feel too tired to do anything, and so on and so forth....
Want to know more? In this video Dr. Russell Foster explains how sleep works and why sleep is so important.