A Vicious Cycle with Pain and Sleep

How does pain affect sleep?

Pain triggers poor sleep; however, initially pain does not affect sleep at all. It’s only after pain has occurred for a while that sleep starts to become fragmented.

How does this fragmentation occur? Microarousals occur throughout the night, and sometimes prevent the person from returning to sleep. These microarousals can occur hourly.

In people with no pain, they also have very light sleep, known as Stage I sleep throughout the night; however, they return to deep sleep quickly; never being fully awake