Sleep Is A Wonderful Thing

Published on June 26, 2007 By MasonM In Blogging

Sleep is great. It really does wonders for the body.

After the hard running I did over the weekend and yesterday my bad hip was killing me. By the time I got unloaded and made it to this truck stop it was sore. I grabbed something to eat here and after sitting down and eating I had a real tough time getting back up again. Oh oh, not a good sign. I very painfully limped back out to my truck, barely able to keep moving and dearly wishing that I had my cane with me right about then.

I crawled into bed, put in a DVD, and stretched out. The hip was killing me at that point. I had planned on doing some knitting but was hurting too badly to want to sit up to do it.

When I woke this morning the hip was just fine again. I got up, dressed, and walked into the truck stop to take care of my morning necessities and get a cup of coffee. I was able to walk without any problem at all and only a slight twinge of pain and stiffness which is pretty normal on a chilly morning such as this.

Amazing what a few hours of sleep can accomplish.

Comments

Dr Guy

on Jun 26, 2007

How high up are you? It sounds strange to hear of a chilly morning this time of year, but I guess when you are up 4-5k feet, the mornings can get nippy.

MasonM

on Jun 26, 2007

How high up are you? It sounds strange to hear of a chilly morning this time of year, but I guess when you are up 4-5k feet, the mornings can get nippy.

Yeah it's about 4500 feet here.

Chaos Manager

on Jun 27, 2007

Amazing what a few hours of sleep can accomplish.

I was recently diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. A key part of the problems associated with this is that alot of the afflicted suffer from sleep deprivation (usually caused by one of many versions of RLS). Because of this, a lot of research is going into sleep treatments and the affects of deep, restful REM sleep on the body. In my readings on this, one good night's sleep can work as effectively as a midrange pain suppressant. The converse is true - when you DON'T get a good night's sleep, the chances that you will be sore, achy and weak the next day go up, astronomically. One study deprived people of a deep restful sleep by waking them every hour, on the hour. They still got 8 hours of sleep each night, but not restful sleep. They did this for 4 nights. The 5th day, the subjects were suffering from effects ranging from muscle aches to joint aches to severe headaches and even severe arthritis-like pain, even if they didn't have a single joint affected by arthritis. Those that already had arthritis or other chronic pain ailments had the effects of that ailment magnified almost 100x. After the 4 days of rest-deprivation, the individuals were allowed to get a full 8 hours of restful sleep (even going so far as to give them sleep aids to ensure the restful sleep). The next morning, everyone that was not affected by a chronic ailment was returned to a near 100% pain free state. Even those individuals with a chronic pain ailment noted a marked decrease in pain levels.

I had this reinforced the other night. I spent Saturday evening in the ER with my daughter (pneumonia). We didn't get home until almost midnight. By the time I got settled down enough to try to sleep (even w/ sleep aids), it was past 2 AM. Because we had to hit the pharmacy early the next morning for her medicine, I didn't much sleep. All day long, I felt like you described. It was one of the worst days that I've had recently. That night, getting a good night's sleep, I was almost back to my new "normal". Just a personal anecdote to go along with yours.

Sorry for being so wordy.

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