October 29, 2024 • 29 mins
Managing pain can be part of life for many of us. Professor Amy Jordan and Associate Professor Natalia Brumley unlock the intriguing relationship between sleep and pain. Find out how different types of pain affect sleep quality, if gender is a factor, and in what ways exercise, blue light and social media consumption might have an impact.
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Carly Godden (00:00):
This podcast was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people.
The Woi-Wurrung and the Bunurong. We'd would like to pay respects
to their elders, past and present and emerging.
From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
of Melbourne. This is PsychTalks.
Cassie Hayward (00:22):
Hi and welcome again to PsychTalks. I'm Associate Professor Cassie
Hayward and I'm here with my co host, Professor Nick Haslam. Hi, Nick.
Nick Haslam (00:30):
Hi Cassie. Great to be here. And as we do
on PsychTalks, I'm really looking forward to diving into another
fascinating journey into psychology research from the University of Melbourne's
School of Psychological Sciences.
Cassie Hayward (00:40):
That's right. And if you are enjoying our episodes, we'd
love it if you could please subscribe or leave a review.
Nick Haslam (00:45):
Yeah, or get the word out by sharing episodes with workmates,
friends and family. OK, so today we're looking at something
that can affect many of us at some stage of life:
pain and its complex relationship with sleep. To guide us
through their very insightful research on this, we're joined by
Professor Amy Jordan and Associate Professor Natalia Brumley. So, Amy,
(01:07):
you run a sleep lab, and you do research on
sleep as you say, Can you tell us what a
sleep lab actually is and how you study people while
they're asleep? I mean, how do they fill out their questionnaires?
Amy Jordan (01:18):
Yeah, well, that's an interesting question, Nick. So, the sleep lab,
to start with, is basically some bedrooms that have a
normal bed and a bedside table, but just a little
bit of equipment, and then outside of the bedrooms, we
have a monitoring area with a bunch of computers. So,
of course, people aren't filling out questionnaires while they're asleep.
(01:39):
But what we do is we typically put electrodes on
their face and on their head just on the surface
of their skin. And then they plug into the equipment
next to their bed so they can still roll around
and move around. Often, it does take people a few
minutes longer to go to sleep, but then once they're asleep,
we can see that on the monitoring room. And we
(01:59):
can either do nasty things like play auditory tones to
wake them up. Or we even have a vibrating device
that goes under the pillow. Uh, so that we can
disturb their sleep sometimes without them even knowing it and then
look at the consequences either for the brain or the body.
Cassie Hayward (02:15):
I have three young kids who often end up in
our bed. So even with all that going on, I
think my husband would happily volunteer for any sleep related
studies you've got going on. So that gives us an
understanding of how you study sleep. But I know one
of the things you've been exploring lately is the relationship
between pain and sleep, and maybe just to start off.
I know people kind of have an understanding of what
(02:35):
pain is. But Natalia, if you could just give us
some proper definitions of maybe chronic and acute pain to
kind of set us on the way.
Natalia Brumley (02:43):
Yes, sure. So, the official definition of pain is that
it's an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience, and that is
associated with or resembling that associated with actual or potential
tissue damage. So here we are, talking about tissue damage,
so pain in principle is very useful. It helps us
prevent further injury, however often once the trigger is off. So,
(03:06):
there is no pain. Uh, there shouldn't be any pain,
it can persist. And if pain lasts more than about
three months, that's what we call chronic pain. What is
really happening with the transition from acute to chronic pain
is that often you experience this so-called pain sensitisation, which
is when the central nervous system undergoes the changes and
(03:29):
becomes more sensitive to pain. And even something that's not
meant to be painful or not very painful becomes painful
for that. And here I feel I should say that
this is exactly what we do in our lab. We
measure pain sensitivity, so whether your response to pain is
more amplified or normal, and we do it in a
(03:50):
variety of ways. So, we induce pain. So, either heat
pain or pressure pain or a cold pain. And then
we look at what point a person says, "This is painful." So,
what is their pain threshold? And the higher the pain threshold,
the less sensitive you are and the opposite.
Cassie Hayward (04:08):
Do people differ in their pain thresholds or pain sensitivity?
Are there common themes in who will press that button
that it hurts sooner rather than later?
Natalia Brumley (04:17):
Yes, absolutely so the age, sex and personality, even, is
the predictor of how sensitive to pain you are. For example,
females are a lot more sensitive to pain, and then
people who actually have chronic pain conditions are known to
have increased pain sensitivity again due to pain sensitisation. Women
(04:38):
are also more- they feel more pain because they amplify
the emotional aspect of it.
Nick Haslam (04:45):
That's really useful background, those definitions of acute and chronic
pain and how they are related. Very useful background, I'm
sure for where we are going with this. So, can
you tell us a bit about the relationship between sleep
and pain? I guess, intuitively, you'd imagine that if you're
experiencing chronic pain, of course it will be harder to
get to sleep. But I imagine the story is more
complex than that.
Natalia Brumley (05:04):
Yes, indeed. A very high percentage of chronic pain patients
find it difficult to sleep, so they experience some sort
of sleep disruption. But what one of the earlier studies
by Edwards and colleagues in 2008 showed that the effect
is bidirectional. So what they did is they called almost
1000 people a few days in a row, asking them
(05:27):
how many hours they slept and how much pain they
were experiencing, how many symptoms of pain they could report.
And then they did some sophisticated statistics and what they
found that obviously the amount of pain predicted some sleep
disturbance the following night. But importantly, a lot of the
effect came from the night before. So, those who slept
(05:48):
less than six hours or more than nine hours reported
more pain the following day. And in our own work,
we work with experimental pain. So not these natural fluctuations
in people's pain symptoms but rather pain sensitivity. And what we
were interested in is whether there are any studies that
already have been done in the lab that would look
(06:11):
at what was happening with the sleep before the pain
measurements and how that affected the pain measurement. And our-
Amy and I have this amazing PhD student, Shima Rouhi,
who did a systematic review where she looked at the
effects of total sleep deprivation, where you do not sleep
at all, or sleep restriction where you sleep fewer hours
(06:33):
than you normally would, and then sleep fragmentation where you
are waking up in the middle of the night multiple
times and looked at how that was affecting the pain threshold,
which I mentioned different types as well as the more
dynamic pain measures how much pain people experience when they
(06:54):
receive a repeated stimulus. So, whether the pain increases and
how much of the pain inhibition or reduction in pain
they get when they get two stimuli, pain stimuli at once.
Looking at those different pain measures, Shima found that there
was indeed a lot of change, especially due to sleep.
(07:15):
Total sleep deprivation. So, it does affect your pain, the
morning after.
Nick Haslam (07:21):
Wow. And so also, it's so handy to know that
sleep quality is not just how much you're getting, but
there are other parameters involved as well. So, are we
talking here only about people who are experiencing clinically diagnosed
pain or sleep problems? Or is this something that could
also affect people who are just doing shift work or
having reduced sleep because they've got young children or things
(07:43):
like that?
Amy Jordan (07:44):
Yeah, so certainly with shift work, it's well known that
they have increased rates of chronic pain problems. How much
of that is due to the sleep? You know, the
poor sleep that they're getting even if they're sleeping during
the day, often their sleep is not as good. They
might have, you know, a bit of a sleep during
the day and then a nap before they go on
to work at night. But they also have lots of
(08:06):
other problems as well, so there's higher rates of obesity.
They often eat at abnormal times, which means that they
have a higher rate of all sorts of cancers and
diabetes and things as well. And so how much of
the pain- increased rate of pain problems they have is
due to the sleep? It's probably all interrelated, but- but
(08:29):
it is certainly true. And the broader question we know
even healthy young university student like we study in our labs.
If we disrupt their sleep, their pain processing is altered
the next day as well. So, it does seem to
be a broader than clinically defined pain and sleep problems.
Cassie Hayward (08:48):
Are there other differences that come into play? So, you
mentioned before, some gender and age differences in pain? So,
did those demographic groups play out in terms of a
difference in how sleep and pain interact?
Amy Jordan (09:01):
Yeah, that's exactly what our PhD student Shima. Her meta-analysis
showed that how sleep influences pain depended in the studies
on how many women were in the studies. So, if
you had a study that was all women, then their
sleep-pain relationship was really clear. If you had a study
(09:23):
with 50-50 or with more men than women, then this
relationship appeared to be somewhat different, and age was another factor. So,
the same factors that contribute to your pain sensitivity seem
to be altering the sleep-pain relationship as well.
Natalia Brumley (09:37):
I should also mention that a lot of the pain
disorders are predominantly women- occur in women, for example, osteoarthritis, migraines
or fibromyalgia. You mostly have women affected and, interestingly, there
has been not as much research done in women specifically,
up until you know, 50 years ago, there would be
(10:00):
mostly men tested because of the belief that menstrual cycle
affects pain, which it does. But so, women were often
not included in clinical trials. The same is, animal work
has been mostly done in male rats or male mice
and not female ones. So, a lot of the treatments
(10:22):
that have been discovered have actually not been tested in
women or have been predominantly following the pathways that are
more true for men than women.
Cassie Hayward (10:32):
That's changing now, right?
Natalia Brumley (10:32):
That is very much changing and in fact, 2024, for
the Association- Association for the Study of Pain, the International
Association for the Study of Pain is the year of
gender and sex differences in pain. There is also a
lot of difference in government policies, and there is the
Victorian sex pain gap occurring at the moment. So, there
(10:53):
is a lot of interest in sex differences in pain.
But there is definitely a gap, and there is definitely
the niche there to address.
Nick Haslam (11:02):
Do we know why there are these differences?
There is a lot less research on that, but we
understand that there could be a few mechanisms and there
could be psychological mechanisms. I already mentioned that there is
this tendency for women to express their pain more readily,
and there is this thought that men tend to withhold
expressing pain. There is some research coming through that there
(11:24):
could be different nociceptors depending on sex, and they act
with different mechanisms again to create this relationship between sleep
and pain. There are some studies also in neurobiology that differ. So,
some neuroimaging evidence to suggest that different neural pathways are
processing pain in men and women. So, there are some
(11:47):
preliminary work that's being done, but nothing is 100% sure.
But obviously, the hormonal effects are important. And that's something
that we are starting to look at in our collaboration
with Amy, our student is now looking at how pain
sensitivity changes over the cycle. So, over the course of
(12:07):
the cycle, that's some work that's currently in preparation.
Cassie Hayward (12:11):
And I guess it goes a little against conventional wisdom
when you think about the pain women go through in
childbirth and these other kind of experiences that women have
that we kind of feel like we can cope with
that pain that. But you're saying that's not really
Amy Jordan (12:26):
Well, I think it's important to remember that pain sensitivity
and pain tolerance are different things as well. So just
because you change, you know, a heat stimuli changes from
feeling warm to painfully hot more soon doesn't mean that
you can't tolerate that pain and put up with it.
So there are distinctions and we can measure those experimentally
(12:49):
in the lab.
Natalia Brumley (12:49):
What is important is to keep in mind that certain
things could predispose you more to the development of chronic
pain and try to reduce those effects and sleep appears
to be one of those.
Nick Haslam (13:02):
I guess one thing people think might be helpful here
is if they can improve their sleep by maybe exercising more.
That might perhaps have benefits for their pain. Is that credible?
Amy Jordan (13:12):
The evidence that exercise objectively changes sleep. People feel like
they sleep better after they've done a good amount of exercise.
They've done a marathon or something. You know, it can
feel like you're sleeping. The evidence is that objective sleep,
as we measured- would measure in the lab is not
actually that greatly altered. In fact, if you take people
(13:36):
who don't exercise and get them to run a marathon
on a treadmill, then actually sleep can be impaired, probably
because they're in a bit of pain, right? Their muscles
are going, "What on the earth happened?" So, the- how
exercise is changing sleep is not as sort of marked
as you would think. Yeah.
Natalia Brumley (13:54):
Whereas exercise would be one of the go-to strategies for
pain management in a lot of pain conditions, for example,
osteoarthritis and that is known to improve your physical pain.
But too much exercise can also make it worse. So,
there is no direct linear relationship between the amount of
exercise and the reduction in pain. It's all quite complex.
(14:16):
And Amy one thing I know a lot of people
get hung up on these days is tracking their sleep
with their smart watches. And I'm guilty of this. And
I must say, I get really angry with my watch
when it casually suggests I have a nap at 3 p.m.
Or maybe I need more sleep tonight. So I think
there's a very complicated relationship with our trackers. But as
sleep researchers, what do you think about this tendency to
(14:39):
people to track their sleep? And the first thing they
look at in the morning is how their their watch
said they slept. How does that impact our feelings about sleep?
Amy Jordan (14:46):
Yeah, So given that the prevalence of insomnia is so
high in the community, I think the watches and you know
devices that can measure sleep in the home now can
be problematic. So if people are waking up and you know,
stressing that they didn't get sufficient sleep and oh, I
better go to bed early tonight and develop anxiety about
(15:09):
their sleep, then, of course, it can be completely counterintuitive.
On the other hand, I think if somebody is feeling
sleepy throughout the day, they're not really sure. Is this
just old age? And my kids, you know, been in
the bed all night long? Is that why I'm not
feeling refreshed when I wake up in the morning? Then
the watches can be useful if they show that, you know, actually,
(15:32):
you know what? You didn't go to bed till 1 a.m.
last night and you were up at five. Presumably you
don't need a watch to tell you that, but for
some people, it can be insightful into their own sleep habits.
But I do think it's more likely that it's causing
stress and anxiety and certainly GPs and sleep physicians are
reporting more and more people are coming in, "My watch
(15:52):
says this. What do I do about it?" And the
reality is, in many cases, those people might not have
problems at all.
Cassie Hayward (16:00):
And it seems very precise and accurate. It says, "You've
got this much REM sleep, this much deep sleep." Is
that an accurate reflection of your sleep, or is there
still some..?
Amy Jordan (16:09):
So the different devices have been validated against sort of
the sleep study like we do in the laboratory. Some
of them are reasonably accurate, but I think the difficulty
is because these are commercial products, they're being- Their algorithms
are being updated and changed all the time. And so,
even if last year your particular brand of watch was
(16:31):
observed to be, you know, quite accurate, you've got no
idea what's happened to the algorithms between then and now.
They really, they are based on heart rate, most of
them these days movement, of course, but then heart rate,
and then they can derive respiration rate from the heart
rate signal as well. So that's what most of them
are using.
Natalia Brumley (16:49):
Speaking of tracking your sleep, there have been studies not
in pain but in cognitive performance, where people were told
that they either slept well, for example, with a particular
sleep stage. They had enough sleep in that stage or
not enough, and after that they measured the participants' cognitive performance,
and those who were told that they slept poorly actually
(17:10):
performed worse than those who were told that they slept well. So,
this is important to keep in mind that this subjective
information is almost more important than the objective information from
your watch that might make you feel worse than you
actually do feel.
Cassie Hayward (17:27):
And Natalia, just to clarify that the information they received
about their sleep was not necessarily true?
Natalia Brumley (17:33):
That's right. That was a complete placebo-nocebo type of scenario
where the information was irrelevant. They were either told that
they slept well or slept poorly. It had nothing to
do with their actual quality of sleep. In fact, all
of them slept well that night.
Nick Haslam (17:48):
So much about sleep and pain is subjective perceptions. The
subjective perceptions don't necessarily map directly onto the objective truth anyway.
And maybe the subjective perceptions are just as important in
some ways. So I guess the other thing that gets
a lot of attention these days is not just screen
time and monitoring watches and things like that, but also
specifically blue light. So what's your take on screens before sleep?
Amy Jordan (18:10):
Yeah, so certainly the experimental evidence done in labs like
ours have put an iPad 30 centimetres from someone's face
at full brightness and in a darkened room. There has
been clear effects in terms of sleep, so they can
demonstrate that it takes you longer to fall asleep. And
if you put blue light blocking glasses on that, that
(18:31):
effect can be minimised. Of course, when we are using
iPads at home or TV or looking at our phones,
that's not how we typically use them. And so I
think probably for most of us, actually, the rest of
our home environment is probably just as important. So are
we sitting with bright white walls and fluorescent lighting on
(18:52):
maximum light at nine o'clock at night? Or do we
have it, like at sunset outside with warm lighting and
nice and dim calm environment like you need to get
ready for sleep? So, I think there's the effect of
light from devices when iPads are used in the home
is much smaller than what's been observed in the laboratory.
(19:12):
Having said that, I still have my night mode on
on my phone and, um, you know, I do try
and minimise this personally because I think whatever I can
do to help is probably good, but I think the
home environment is probably more important. The other aspect with
devices is what you're actually doing on the devices. So
if you're watching nature documentary that you're not particularly interested in,
(19:36):
you've got the blue light you know, turned down. That
might not impact your sleep anywhere near as greatly as
if you're playing a video game with your mates or
if you're on social media. For teens, this is a
big issue these days that if all of their high
school friends are having a group chat, they don't want
to say, "You know, look, it's nine o'clock. I need to, like,
(19:58):
wind down for bed now." they want to hear what
their friends have to say, and so this fear of
missing out on the social interactions is actually a big
driver of teens staying awake at night. So I think
the light is one aspect. But then, you know, what
you're doing on the device is probably as big a
factor and your home environment.
Cassie Hayward (20:19):
So a little bit of passive consumption of screens probably
isn't going to impact sleep as much as you know,
a discussion or a social interaction that people are having
via their screens.
Amy Jordan (20:30):
Yeah, That's exactly right. And so, you know, my kids
haven't got to the teenage years yet, but my plan
when they have phones, et cetera, is to have an
arrangement where, yes, they can use them up until an
hour before their bedtime, for example, and then they can
watch some TV after that, as long as it's not
a thriller that's going to get their heart rate through
the roof, but to have some compromise there that they
(20:52):
can have it for a certain amount of time. But
no phones in the bedroom, I think, will be what
I plan to attempt to get them to stick to
Cassie Hayward (20:59):
We all have good plans.
Amy Jordan (21:01):
Yeah, that's right. The reality might be a different story.
Cassie Hayward (21:03):
The other thing with kids these days is a lot
Have these kind of LED lights in their room or
fairy lights or coloured lights, either gamers or just for
some decoration. Does that have an impact on their sleep?
Should we say it has to be a certain tone
of light? If they've got these fairy lights that are on,
you know, while they're trying to sleep.
Amy Jordan (21:21):
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that there's
actually been that much research done on it. However, again,
the blue light effect is real. And so my kids
got bunks a few years ago and the oldest on
the top bunk wanted a light so that she could
read at night. So we put some strip lighting on
there and I turned it on. I was like, "Oh,
my goodness, what have I done? This is so bright."
(21:44):
And so again, I was like, right, well, that's it.
We'll just put some red cellophane over the top to
make it a warm, calm, you know, think of sunset.
That sort of is your evolutionary has been a good
key to the- to the body that it's time to
wind down and get ready for the restful part of
the day.
Cassie Hayward (22:01):
And I think a lot of parents can kind of
relate to uninterrupted sleep or wanting to maximise the sleep
that their kids get, so I'm sure they're taking notes
as I am. But in more serious scenarios, if someone
is suffering from chronic pain, what can they look at
from a sleep perspective to help them with that pain experience.
Is it more than just, you know, monitoring their social
(22:22):
media and putting some red lights in their room?
Natalia Brumley (22:25):
Yes, some of our research in healthy participants indicates that
sleeping between six and nine hours is probably a good
idea because some of our own research shows that even
if you are not objectively experiencing any problems sleeping less
than six hours, we still observe an effect on pain sensitivity,
(22:46):
so you are less able to inhibit your pain.
Amy Jordan (22:49):
Yes. I mean, I think the prioritising of sleep work
with their doctor. If pain is causing them to have
problems sleeping then pillows in appropriate place, if it's osteoarthritis
and those sorts of things to make their bedroom as
comfortable as they can, working out the timing of their medication.
This needs to be done in consultation with their doctor.
For example, opioids that commonly people might take do have
(23:13):
depressant effects on breathing, and when you go to sleep,
you already have a depression in your breathing. So, you
certainly want to do that in consultation with your doctor,
but trying to minimise your pain so that you can
maximise your sleep is really important. And then I think
the other thing that if you do have a bad night,
try not to catastrophise about it. If you're awake at
three o'clock in the morning, you know, you're uncomfortable. You're
(23:35):
having difficulty sleeping. You know, to try and not immediately think, "Right,
tomorrow is going to be a disaster." and get stressed
about it, because then you're less likely to be able
to go back to sleep. So this is where mindfulness
can be really useful to sort of just accept what's happening.
try not to be too disturbed by it as much
as you can and relax. And maybe if you've got kids, Cassie,
(23:57):
enjoy the silence of the house.
Nick Haslam (24:01):
And that sounds like yeah, generally good advice, not just
for people with chronic pain, but for those listeners who
don't have chronic pain, I mean, what other things can
you do to just improve your sleeping? Practically.
Amy Jordan (24:11):
Yeah. So, I think one of the most important things
that's often overlooked is keeping a fairly consistent routine. So
if you try and go to bed about the same time,
each night. Obviously, weekends, we often like to do social things
and stay up a little bit. But try and get
back to that within half an hour or so of
whatever sleep time, you know, whatever bedtime you have. If
(24:34):
you do that regularly, then your body is just primed
for sleep. At that time. Your circadian rhythm, your internal
body clock gets into a nice, strong rhythm. And so,
even if you've had a bit of a bad day,
your pain is a bit worse or whatever. You'll be
more likely to be able to sleep. In terms of
other things that are really important is to introduce a
(24:56):
wind down time. And this comes back to what we
were talking about with the screens as well. So, about
an hour before bed, it's good to turn off the
computer if you're an academic like us or to you know,
shut down the social media if you're a teen and
to again have that time to let your body relax
and wind down and get ready for sleep. For younger kids,
(25:19):
having a bath is really good. It actually works really
well for adults, too, and there's probably an excellent solution
for people with pain. So, when we have a warm
bath or a hot shower, we actually we get quite warm.
Our skin flushes a little bit. So, then you get out
of the shower and your core body temperature actually falls.
And that's a critical part of going to sleep. Our
(25:40):
core body temperature drops, And so that's why having a
bath helps. So that can be a good thing to incorporate,
particularly for kids but into the wind down time. The
other thing is just keeping an eye on your drive
for sleep. So across the day, obviously, our drive for
sleep builds up and up. If you have a nap
(26:01):
at five o'clock in the afternoon, you're gonna reduce that
drive a little bit. So at 10 or 11 o'clock
when you go to bed, whatever your time is, you're
not going to be as sleepy. So if you're going
to have a nap, keep it short and keep it
earlier in the day. And of course, you know, for
people with pain again or people with young children like
they can be absolutely critical to get those naps in
(26:22):
order to function. But just be careful about when you
do it. I guess. Other tips for sleep for everybody
keep alcohol and, you know, low in the evening. Caffeine ideally,
sort of not after, if you're sensitive, not after midday
or one or two o'clock in the afternoon and then make
sure your bedroom environment is appropriate for sleep. Dim lighting
(26:46):
and about 20 degrees 22 degrees somewhere in that range
is sort of optimal. Sometimes you can't control these things,
but as much as you can. The saying that's common
in the- in the sleep field is that the bedroom
is for sleep and sex and everything else
all of that, keep out of the bedroom so that
you know you can really prioritise your sleep when you're
(27:09):
in there.
Nick Haslam (27:10):
So, Amy, when you go to a sleep conference, does
this mean there's no drinking? Does this mean you sort
of all leave at 8:30 to have your warm bath? Or,
I mean, it's not what I heard at all it.
Amy Jordan (27:23):
It's funny because I'm instantly brought back to the sleep
conference in Adelaide last year where about three o'clock in
the morning, most of the conference was in a bar dancing. So, um,
I think that answers that question.
Nick Haslam (27:36):
But that's just one day a year.
Amy Jordan (27:37):
That's right.
Nick Haslam (27:39):
Otherwise, you've got perfect sleep hygiene.
Amy Jordan (27:39):
The rest of the time we're, sleep citizens.
Cassie Hayward (27:42):
Sleep citizens. And that's such great advice, not the dancing
on the bar part. But the stuff you said before
that is all great advice. But I guess is it
also true to say that quote unquote "normal" sleep varies
a lot from person to person, and I think there's
a lot of anxiety around people getting the perfect sleep.
There's a lot of focus on sleep in the health
and wellness space at the moment. I think just some
perspective taking in, you know, if you can't have exactly
(28:05):
the same routine or exactly the right wind down or
things happen, just some advice for people, but not to
get too hung up on the perfect sleep. Even if
that exists.
Amy Jordan (28:16):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Cassie. Even in, you know,
when we have perfect opportunity for sleep, people are vastly different.
Some people, six hours, that's it. They spring out of bed,
you know, like they had 10 hours for me. And
so there is-there is individual differences in how much sleep
(28:38):
we need, how deeply we sleep when we are asleep.
That changes over age, of course as well. And so, again,
I think if you're not falling asleep, you know, excessively
during the daytim,e you're managing, then try not to get
too hung up on it. But then you know when
you can- you get back to prioritising it. And in
(28:59):
a few years, your children won't want to be in
bed with you anymore. And you'll have plenty of opportunity
to practise good sleeping.
Cassie Hayward (29:08):
It's such good advice that I am going to make
my kids listen to this episode.
Amy Jordan (29:12):
Well, just make sure it's not before bedtime.
Nick Haslam (29:16):
Thanks so much for talking to us today. Amy and Natalia.
Amy Jordan (29:19):
Thank you for having us.
Nick Haslam (29:22):
You've been listening to psych talks with me, Nick Haslam
and Cassie Hayward. We'd like to thank our guests for today.
Professor Amy Jordan and associate professor Natalia Brumley. This episode
was produced by Carly Godden with production assistance from Mairead
Murray and Gemma Papprill. Our sound engineer was Jack Palmer.
Thanks for tuning in, and we'll be back in a
fortnight with another great episode. Bye for now.
This podcast was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people.
The Woi-Wurrung and the Bunurong. We'd would like to pay respects
to their elders, past and present and emerging.
From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
of Melbourne. This is PsychTalks.
Cassie Hayward (00:22):
Hi and welcome again to PsychTalks. I'm Associate Professor Cassie
Hayward and I'm here with my co host, Professor Nick Haslam. Hi, Nick.
Nick Haslam (00:30):
Hi Cassie. Great to be here. And as we do
on PsychTalks, I'm really looking forward to diving into another
fascinating journey into psychology research from the University of Melbourne's
School of Psychological Sciences.
Cassie Hayward (00:40):
That's right. And if you are enjoying our episodes, we'd
love it if you could please subscribe or leave a review.
Nick Haslam (00:45):
Yeah, or get the word out by sharing episodes with workmates,
friends and family. OK, so today we're looking at something
that can affect many of us at some stage of life:
pain and its complex relationship with sleep. To guide us
through their very insightful research on this, we're joined by
Professor Amy Jordan and Associate Professor Natalia Brumley. So, Amy,
(01:07):
you run a sleep lab, and you do research on
sleep as you say, Can you tell us what a
sleep lab actually is and how you study people while
they're asleep? I mean, how do they fill out their questionnaires?
Amy Jordan (01:18):
Yeah, well, that's an interesting question, Nick. So, the sleep lab,
to start with, is basically some bedrooms that have a
normal bed and a bedside table, but just a little
bit of equipment, and then outside of the bedrooms, we
have a monitoring area with a bunch of computers. So,
of course, people aren't filling out questionnaires while they're asleep.
(01:39):
But what we do is we typically put electrodes on
their face and on their head just on the surface
of their skin. And then they plug into the equipment
next to their bed so they can still roll around
and move around. Often, it does take people a few
minutes longer to go to sleep, but then once they're asleep,
we can see that on the monitoring room. And we
(01:59):
can either do nasty things like play auditory tones to
wake them up. Or we even have a vibrating device
that goes under the pillow. Uh, so that we can
disturb their sleep sometimes without them even knowing it and then
look at the consequences either for the brain or the body.
Cassie Hayward (02:15):
I have three young kids who often end up in
our bed. So even with all that going on, I
think my husband would happily volunteer for any sleep related
studies you've got going on. So that gives us an
understanding of how you study sleep. But I know one
of the things you've been exploring lately is the relationship
between pain and sleep, and maybe just to start off.
I know people kind of have an understanding of what
(02:35):
pain is. But Natalia, if you could just give us
some proper definitions of maybe chronic and acute pain to
kind of set us on the way.
Natalia Brumley (02:43):
Yes, sure. So, the official definition of pain is that
it's an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience, and that is
associated with or resembling that associated with actual or potential
tissue damage. So here we are, talking about tissue damage,
so pain in principle is very useful. It helps us
prevent further injury, however often once the trigger is off. So,
(03:06):
there is no pain. Uh, there shouldn't be any pain,
it can persist. And if pain lasts more than about
three months, that's what we call chronic pain. What is
really happening with the transition from acute to chronic pain
is that often you experience this so-called pain sensitisation, which
is when the central nervous system undergoes the changes and
(03:29):
becomes more sensitive to pain. And even something that's not
meant to be painful or not very painful becomes painful
for that. And here I feel I should say that
this is exactly what we do in our lab. We
measure pain sensitivity, so whether your response to pain is
more amplified or normal, and we do it in a
(03:50):
variety of ways. So, we induce pain. So, either heat
pain or pressure pain or a cold pain. And then
we look at what point a person says, "This is painful." So,
what is their pain threshold? And the higher the pain threshold,
the less sensitive you are and the opposite.
Cassie Hayward (04:08):
Do people differ in their pain thresholds or pain sensitivity?
Are there common themes in who will press that button
that it hurts sooner rather than later?
Natalia Brumley (04:17):
Yes, absolutely so the age, sex and personality, even, is
the predictor of how sensitive to pain you are. For example,
females are a lot more sensitive to pain, and then
people who actually have chronic pain conditions are known to
have increased pain sensitivity again due to pain sensitisation. Women
(04:38):
are also more- they feel more pain because they amplify
the emotional aspect of it.
Nick Haslam (04:45):
That's really useful background, those definitions of acute and chronic
pain and how they are related. Very useful background, I'm
sure for where we are going with this. So, can
you tell us a bit about the relationship between sleep
and pain? I guess, intuitively, you'd imagine that if you're
experiencing chronic pain, of course it will be harder to
get to sleep. But I imagine the story is more
complex than that.
Natalia Brumley (05:04):
Yes, indeed. A very high percentage of chronic pain patients
find it difficult to sleep, so they experience some sort
of sleep disruption. But what one of the earlier studies
by Edwards and colleagues in 2008 showed that the effect
is bidirectional. So what they did is they called almost
1000 people a few days in a row, asking them
(05:27):
how many hours they slept and how much pain they
were experiencing, how many symptoms of pain they could report.
And then they did some sophisticated statistics and what they
found that obviously the amount of pain predicted some sleep
disturbance the following night. But importantly, a lot of the
effect came from the night before. So, those who slept
(05:48):
less than six hours or more than nine hours reported
more pain the following day. And in our own work,
we work with experimental pain. So not these natural fluctuations
in people's pain symptoms but rather pain sensitivity. And what we
were interested in is whether there are any studies that
already have been done in the lab that would look
(06:11):
at what was happening with the sleep before the pain
measurements and how that affected the pain measurement. And our-
Amy and I have this amazing PhD student, Shima Rouhi,
who did a systematic review where she looked at the
effects of total sleep deprivation, where you do not sleep
at all, or sleep restriction where you sleep fewer hours
(06:33):
than you normally would, and then sleep fragmentation where you
are waking up in the middle of the night multiple
times and looked at how that was affecting the pain threshold,
which I mentioned different types as well as the more
dynamic pain measures how much pain people experience when they
(06:54):
receive a repeated stimulus. So, whether the pain increases and
how much of the pain inhibition or reduction in pain
they get when they get two stimuli, pain stimuli at once.
Looking at those different pain measures, Shima found that there
was indeed a lot of change, especially due to sleep.
(07:15):
Total sleep deprivation. So, it does affect your pain, the
morning after.
Nick Haslam (07:21):
Wow. And so also, it's so handy to know that
sleep quality is not just how much you're getting, but
there are other parameters involved as well. So, are we
talking here only about people who are experiencing clinically diagnosed
pain or sleep problems? Or is this something that could
also affect people who are just doing shift work or
having reduced sleep because they've got young children or things
(07:43):
like that?
Amy Jordan (07:44):
Yeah, so certainly with shift work, it's well known that
they have increased rates of chronic pain problems. How much
of that is due to the sleep? You know, the
poor sleep that they're getting even if they're sleeping during
the day, often their sleep is not as good. They
might have, you know, a bit of a sleep during
the day and then a nap before they go on
to work at night. But they also have lots of
(08:06):
other problems as well, so there's higher rates of obesity.
They often eat at abnormal times, which means that they
have a higher rate of all sorts of cancers and
diabetes and things as well. And so how much of
the pain- increased rate of pain problems they have is
due to the sleep? It's probably all interrelated, but- but
(08:29):
it is certainly true. And the broader question we know
even healthy young university student like we study in our labs.
If we disrupt their sleep, their pain processing is altered
the next day as well. So, it does seem to
be a broader than clinically defined pain and sleep problems.
Cassie Hayward (08:48):
Are there other differences that come into play? So, you
mentioned before, some gender and age differences in pain? So,
did those demographic groups play out in terms of a
difference in how sleep and pain interact?
Amy Jordan (09:01):
Yeah, that's exactly what our PhD student Shima. Her meta-analysis
showed that how sleep influences pain depended in the studies
on how many women were in the studies. So, if
you had a study that was all women, then their
sleep-pain relationship was really clear. If you had a study
(09:23):
with 50-50 or with more men than women, then this
relationship appeared to be somewhat different, and age was another factor. So,
the same factors that contribute to your pain sensitivity seem
to be altering the sleep-pain relationship as well.
Natalia Brumley (09:37):
I should also mention that a lot of the pain
disorders are predominantly women- occur in women, for example, osteoarthritis, migraines
or fibromyalgia. You mostly have women affected and, interestingly, there
has been not as much research done in women specifically,
up until you know, 50 years ago, there would be
(10:00):
mostly men tested because of the belief that menstrual cycle
affects pain, which it does. But so, women were often
not included in clinical trials. The same is, animal work
has been mostly done in male rats or male mice
and not female ones. So, a lot of the treatments
(10:22):
that have been discovered have actually not been tested in
women or have been predominantly following the pathways that are
more true for men than women.
Cassie Hayward (10:32):
That's changing now, right?
Natalia Brumley (10:32):
That is very much changing and in fact, 2024, for
the Association- Association for the Study of Pain, the International
Association for the Study of Pain is the year of
gender and sex differences in pain. There is also a
lot of difference in government policies, and there is the
Victorian sex pain gap occurring at the moment. So, there
(10:53):
is a lot of interest in sex differences in pain.
But there is definitely a gap, and there is definitely
the niche there to address.
Nick Haslam (11:02):
Do we know why there are these differences?
There is a lot less research on that, but we
understand that there could be a few mechanisms and there
could be psychological mechanisms. I already mentioned that there is
this tendency for women to express their pain more readily,
and there is this thought that men tend to withhold
expressing pain. There is some research coming through that there
(11:24):
could be different nociceptors depending on sex, and they act
with different mechanisms again to create this relationship between sleep
and pain. There are some studies also in neurobiology that differ. So,
some neuroimaging evidence to suggest that different neural pathways are
processing pain in men and women. So, there are some
(11:47):
preliminary work that's being done, but nothing is 100% sure.
But obviously, the hormonal effects are important. And that's something
that we are starting to look at in our collaboration
with Amy, our student is now looking at how pain
sensitivity changes over the cycle. So, over the course of
(12:07):
the cycle, that's some work that's currently in preparation.
Cassie Hayward (12:11):
And I guess it goes a little against conventional wisdom
when you think about the pain women go through in
childbirth and these other kind of experiences that women have
that we kind of feel like we can cope with
that pain that. But you're saying that's not really
Amy Jordan (12:26):
Well, I think it's important to remember that pain sensitivity
and pain tolerance are different things as well. So just
because you change, you know, a heat stimuli changes from
feeling warm to painfully hot more soon doesn't mean that
you can't tolerate that pain and put up with it.
So there are distinctions and we can measure those experimentally
(12:49):
in the lab.
Natalia Brumley (12:49):
What is important is to keep in mind that certain
things could predispose you more to the development of chronic
pain and try to reduce those effects and sleep appears
to be one of those.
Nick Haslam (13:02):
I guess one thing people think might be helpful here
is if they can improve their sleep by maybe exercising more.
That might perhaps have benefits for their pain. Is that credible?
Amy Jordan (13:12):
The evidence that exercise objectively changes sleep. People feel like
they sleep better after they've done a good amount of exercise.
They've done a marathon or something. You know, it can
feel like you're sleeping. The evidence is that objective sleep,
as we measured- would measure in the lab is not
actually that greatly altered. In fact, if you take people
(13:36):
who don't exercise and get them to run a marathon
on a treadmill, then actually sleep can be impaired, probably
because they're in a bit of pain, right? Their muscles
are going, "What on the earth happened?" So, the- how
exercise is changing sleep is not as sort of marked
as you would think. Yeah.
Natalia Brumley (13:54):
Whereas exercise would be one of the go-to strategies for
pain management in a lot of pain conditions, for example,
osteoarthritis and that is known to improve your physical pain.
But too much exercise can also make it worse. So,
there is no direct linear relationship between the amount of
exercise and the reduction in pain. It's all quite complex.
(14:16):
And Amy one thing I know a lot of people
get hung up on these days is tracking their sleep
with their smart watches. And I'm guilty of this. And
I must say, I get really angry with my watch
when it casually suggests I have a nap at 3 p.m.
Or maybe I need more sleep tonight. So I think
there's a very complicated relationship with our trackers. But as
sleep researchers, what do you think about this tendency to
(14:39):
people to track their sleep? And the first thing they
look at in the morning is how their their watch
said they slept. How does that impact our feelings about sleep?
Amy Jordan (14:46):
Yeah, So given that the prevalence of insomnia is so
high in the community, I think the watches and you know
devices that can measure sleep in the home now can
be problematic. So if people are waking up and you know,
stressing that they didn't get sufficient sleep and oh, I
better go to bed early tonight and develop anxiety about
(15:09):
their sleep, then, of course, it can be completely counterintuitive.
On the other hand, I think if somebody is feeling
sleepy throughout the day, they're not really sure. Is this
just old age? And my kids, you know, been in
the bed all night long? Is that why I'm not
feeling refreshed when I wake up in the morning? Then
the watches can be useful if they show that, you know, actually,
(15:32):
you know what? You didn't go to bed till 1 a.m.
last night and you were up at five. Presumably you
don't need a watch to tell you that, but for
some people, it can be insightful into their own sleep habits.
But I do think it's more likely that it's causing
stress and anxiety and certainly GPs and sleep physicians are
reporting more and more people are coming in, "My watch
(15:52):
says this. What do I do about it?" And the
reality is, in many cases, those people might not have
problems at all.
Cassie Hayward (16:00):
And it seems very precise and accurate. It says, "You've
got this much REM sleep, this much deep sleep." Is
that an accurate reflection of your sleep, or is there
still some..?
Amy Jordan (16:09):
So the different devices have been validated against sort of
the sleep study like we do in the laboratory. Some
of them are reasonably accurate, but I think the difficulty
is because these are commercial products, they're being- Their algorithms
are being updated and changed all the time. And so,
even if last year your particular brand of watch was
(16:31):
observed to be, you know, quite accurate, you've got no
idea what's happened to the algorithms between then and now.
They really, they are based on heart rate, most of
them these days movement, of course, but then heart rate,
and then they can derive respiration rate from the heart
rate signal as well. So that's what most of them
are using.
Natalia Brumley (16:49):
Speaking of tracking your sleep, there have been studies not
in pain but in cognitive performance, where people were told
that they either slept well, for example, with a particular
sleep stage. They had enough sleep in that stage or
not enough, and after that they measured the participants' cognitive performance,
and those who were told that they slept poorly actually
(17:10):
performed worse than those who were told that they slept well. So,
this is important to keep in mind that this subjective
information is almost more important than the objective information from
your watch that might make you feel worse than you
actually do feel.
Cassie Hayward (17:27):
And Natalia, just to clarify that the information they received
about their sleep was not necessarily true?
Natalia Brumley (17:33):
That's right. That was a complete placebo-nocebo type of scenario
where the information was irrelevant. They were either told that
they slept well or slept poorly. It had nothing to
do with their actual quality of sleep. In fact, all
of them slept well that night.
Nick Haslam (17:48):
So much about sleep and pain is subjective perceptions. The
subjective perceptions don't necessarily map directly onto the objective truth anyway.
And maybe the subjective perceptions are just as important in
some ways. So I guess the other thing that gets
a lot of attention these days is not just screen
time and monitoring watches and things like that, but also
specifically blue light. So what's your take on screens before sleep?
Amy Jordan (18:10):
Yeah, so certainly the experimental evidence done in labs like
ours have put an iPad 30 centimetres from someone's face
at full brightness and in a darkened room. There has
been clear effects in terms of sleep, so they can
demonstrate that it takes you longer to fall asleep. And
if you put blue light blocking glasses on that, that
(18:31):
effect can be minimised. Of course, when we are using
iPads at home or TV or looking at our phones,
that's not how we typically use them. And so I
think probably for most of us, actually, the rest of
our home environment is probably just as important. So are
we sitting with bright white walls and fluorescent lighting on
(18:52):
maximum light at nine o'clock at night? Or do we
have it, like at sunset outside with warm lighting and
nice and dim calm environment like you need to get
ready for sleep? So, I think there's the effect of
light from devices when iPads are used in the home
is much smaller than what's been observed in the laboratory.
(19:12):
Having said that, I still have my night mode on
on my phone and, um, you know, I do try
and minimise this personally because I think whatever I can
do to help is probably good, but I think the
home environment is probably more important. The other aspect with
devices is what you're actually doing on the devices. So
if you're watching nature documentary that you're not particularly interested in,
(19:36):
you've got the blue light you know, turned down. That
might not impact your sleep anywhere near as greatly as
if you're playing a video game with your mates or
if you're on social media. For teens, this is a
big issue these days that if all of their high
school friends are having a group chat, they don't want
to say, "You know, look, it's nine o'clock. I need to, like,
(19:58):
wind down for bed now." they want to hear what
their friends have to say, and so this fear of
missing out on the social interactions is actually a big
driver of teens staying awake at night. So I think
the light is one aspect. But then, you know, what
you're doing on the device is probably as big a
factor and your home environment.
Cassie Hayward (20:19):
So a little bit of passive consumption of screens probably
isn't going to impact sleep as much as you know,
a discussion or a social interaction that people are having
via their screens.
Amy Jordan (20:30):
Yeah, That's exactly right. And so, you know, my kids
haven't got to the teenage years yet, but my plan
when they have phones, et cetera, is to have an
arrangement where, yes, they can use them up until an
hour before their bedtime, for example, and then they can
watch some TV after that, as long as it's not
a thriller that's going to get their heart rate through
the roof, but to have some compromise there that they
(20:52):
can have it for a certain amount of time. But
no phones in the bedroom, I think, will be what
I plan to attempt to get them to stick to
Cassie Hayward (20:59):
We all have good plans.
Amy Jordan (21:01):
Yeah, that's right. The reality might be a different story.
Cassie Hayward (21:03):
The other thing with kids these days is a lot
Have these kind of LED lights in their room or
fairy lights or coloured lights, either gamers or just for
some decoration. Does that have an impact on their sleep?
Should we say it has to be a certain tone
of light? If they've got these fairy lights that are on,
you know, while they're trying to sleep.
Amy Jordan (21:21):
Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that there's
actually been that much research done on it. However, again,
the blue light effect is real. And so my kids
got bunks a few years ago and the oldest on
the top bunk wanted a light so that she could
read at night. So we put some strip lighting on
there and I turned it on. I was like, "Oh,
my goodness, what have I done? This is so bright."
(21:44):
And so again, I was like, right, well, that's it.
We'll just put some red cellophane over the top to
make it a warm, calm, you know, think of sunset.
That sort of is your evolutionary has been a good
key to the- to the body that it's time to
wind down and get ready for the restful part of
the day.
Cassie Hayward (22:01):
And I think a lot of parents can kind of
relate to uninterrupted sleep or wanting to maximise the sleep
that their kids get, so I'm sure they're taking notes
as I am. But in more serious scenarios, if someone
is suffering from chronic pain, what can they look at
from a sleep perspective to help them with that pain experience.
Is it more than just, you know, monitoring their social
(22:22):
media and putting some red lights in their room?
Natalia Brumley (22:25):
Yes, some of our research in healthy participants indicates that
sleeping between six and nine hours is probably a good
idea because some of our own research shows that even
if you are not objectively experiencing any problems sleeping less
than six hours, we still observe an effect on pain sensitivity,
(22:46):
so you are less able to inhibit your pain.
Amy Jordan (22:49):
Yes. I mean, I think the prioritising of sleep work
with their doctor. If pain is causing them to have
problems sleeping then pillows in appropriate place, if it's osteoarthritis
and those sorts of things to make their bedroom as
comfortable as they can, working out the timing of their medication.
This needs to be done in consultation with their doctor.
For example, opioids that commonly people might take do have
(23:13):
depressant effects on breathing, and when you go to sleep,
you already have a depression in your breathing. So, you
certainly want to do that in consultation with your doctor,
but trying to minimise your pain so that you can
maximise your sleep is really important. And then I think
the other thing that if you do have a bad night,
try not to catastrophise about it. If you're awake at
three o'clock in the morning, you know, you're uncomfortable. You're
(23:35):
having difficulty sleeping. You know, to try and not immediately think, "Right,
tomorrow is going to be a disaster." and get stressed
about it, because then you're less likely to be able
to go back to sleep. So this is where mindfulness
can be really useful to sort of just accept what's happening.
try not to be too disturbed by it as much
as you can and relax. And maybe if you've got kids, Cassie,
(23:57):
enjoy the silence of the house.
Nick Haslam (24:01):
And that sounds like yeah, generally good advice, not just
for people with chronic pain, but for those listeners who
don't have chronic pain, I mean, what other things can
you do to just improve your sleeping? Practically.
Amy Jordan (24:11):
Yeah. So, I think one of the most important things
that's often overlooked is keeping a fairly consistent routine. So
if you try and go to bed about the same time,
each night. Obviously, weekends, we often like to do social things
and stay up a little bit. But try and get
back to that within half an hour or so of
whatever sleep time, you know, whatever bedtime you have. If
(24:34):
you do that regularly, then your body is just primed
for sleep. At that time. Your circadian rhythm, your internal
body clock gets into a nice, strong rhythm. And so,
even if you've had a bit of a bad day,
your pain is a bit worse or whatever. You'll be
more likely to be able to sleep. In terms of
other things that are really important is to introduce a
(24:56):
wind down time. And this comes back to what we
were talking about with the screens as well. So, about
an hour before bed, it's good to turn off the
computer if you're an academic like us or to you know,
shut down the social media if you're a teen and
to again have that time to let your body relax
and wind down and get ready for sleep. For younger kids,
(25:19):
having a bath is really good. It actually works really
well for adults, too, and there's probably an excellent solution
for people with pain. So, when we have a warm
bath or a hot shower, we actually we get quite warm.
Our skin flushes a little bit. So, then you get out
of the shower and your core body temperature actually falls.
And that's a critical part of going to sleep. Our
(25:40):
core body temperature drops, And so that's why having a
bath helps. So that can be a good thing to incorporate,
particularly for kids but into the wind down time. The
other thing is just keeping an eye on your drive
for sleep. So across the day, obviously, our drive for
sleep builds up and up. If you have a nap
(26:01):
at five o'clock in the afternoon, you're gonna reduce that
drive a little bit. So at 10 or 11 o'clock
when you go to bed, whatever your time is, you're
not going to be as sleepy. So if you're going
to have a nap, keep it short and keep it
earlier in the day. And of course, you know, for
people with pain again or people with young children like
they can be absolutely critical to get those naps in
(26:22):
order to function. But just be careful about when you
do it. I guess. Other tips for sleep for everybody
keep alcohol and, you know, low in the evening. Caffeine ideally,
sort of not after, if you're sensitive, not after midday
or one or two o'clock in the afternoon and then make
sure your bedroom environment is appropriate for sleep. Dim lighting
(26:46):
and about 20 degrees 22 degrees somewhere in that range
is sort of optimal. Sometimes you can't control these things,
but as much as you can. The saying that's common
in the- in the sleep field is that the bedroom
is for sleep and sex and everything else
all of that, keep out of the bedroom so that
you know you can really prioritise your sleep when you're
(27:09):
in there.
Nick Haslam (27:10):
So, Amy, when you go to a sleep conference, does
this mean there's no drinking? Does this mean you sort
of all leave at 8:30 to have your warm bath? Or,
I mean, it's not what I heard at all it.
Amy Jordan (27:23):
It's funny because I'm instantly brought back to the sleep
conference in Adelaide last year where about three o'clock in
the morning, most of the conference was in a bar dancing. So, um,
I think that answers that question.
Nick Haslam (27:36):
But that's just one day a year.
Amy Jordan (27:37):
That's right.
Nick Haslam (27:39):
Otherwise, you've got perfect sleep hygiene.
Amy Jordan (27:39):
The rest of the time we're, sleep citizens.
Cassie Hayward (27:42):
Sleep citizens. And that's such great advice, not the dancing
on the bar part. But the stuff you said before
that is all great advice. But I guess is it
also true to say that quote unquote "normal" sleep varies
a lot from person to person, and I think there's
a lot of anxiety around people getting the perfect sleep.
There's a lot of focus on sleep in the health
and wellness space at the moment. I think just some
perspective taking in, you know, if you can't have exactly
(28:05):
the same routine or exactly the right wind down or
things happen, just some advice for people, but not to
get too hung up on the perfect sleep. Even if
that exists.
Amy Jordan (28:16):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Cassie. Even in, you know,
when we have perfect opportunity for sleep, people are vastly different.
Some people, six hours, that's it. They spring out of bed,
you know, like they had 10 hours for me. And
so there is-there is individual differences in how much sleep
(28:38):
we need, how deeply we sleep when we are asleep.
That changes over age, of course as well. And so, again,
I think if you're not falling asleep, you know, excessively
during the daytim,e you're managing, then try not to get
too hung up on it. But then you know when
you can- you get back to prioritising it. And in
(28:59):
a few years, your children won't want to be in
bed with you anymore. And you'll have plenty of opportunity
to practise good sleeping.
Cassie Hayward (29:08):
It's such good advice that I am going to make
my kids listen to this episode.
Amy Jordan (29:12):
Well, just make sure it's not before bedtime.
Nick Haslam (29:16):
Thanks so much for talking to us today. Amy and Natalia.
Amy Jordan (29:19):
Thank you for having us.
Nick Haslam (29:22):
You've been listening to psych talks with me, Nick Haslam
and Cassie Hayward. We'd like to thank our guests for today.
Professor Amy Jordan and associate professor Natalia Brumley. This episode
was produced by Carly Godden with production assistance from Mairead
Murray and Gemma Papprill. Our sound engineer was Jack Palmer.
Thanks for tuning in, and we'll be back in a
fortnight with another great episode. Bye for now.
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