How to Get Better Sleep When You Have IBD

A lot of people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have trouble sleeping. By some estimates, roughly 75% of people with IBD experience sleep disturbances such as trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, and poor overall sleep quality. Meanwhile, surveys of IBD patients have found that poor sleep tends to be the top contributor to quality-of-life issues. The fact that so many people with IBD experience problems sleeping is bad news for a number of reasons. For one thing, a lot seems to go wrong with the human mind and body when sleep is inadequate; sleep disorders such as insomnia are strongly linked to an increased risk for a range of mental and physical health conditions, including depression and Alzheimer’s disease. But secondly, and maybe more importantly, researchers have found that poor sleep may worsen pain, fatigue, and other symptoms among people with inflammatory diseases like IBD. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] While the relationship between poor sleep and IBD is something experts are still working out, they’ve already found evidence that the two conditions may have a bidirectional relationship, meaning they contribute to one another in unhelpful ways. According to the authors of a 2020 study in the journal Crohn’s & Colitis 360, people with IBD who sleep poorly may slip into “a cycle wherein sleep disturbance and IBD worsen and maintain one another, deteriorating quality of life and worsening overall disease activ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Gut health healthscienceclimate Source Type: news