Poor Quality Sleep: A Silent Source of Disability in Breast Cancer

The post below ran on Huffington Post Healthy Living on May 13. It is authored by Hrayr Attarian, MD, FACCP, FAASM, Member of the Society for Women’s Health Rearch Network on Sleep and Associate Professor of Neurology, Northwestern University, Circadian Rhythms and Sleep Research Lab for the Society for Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Network on Sleep. Poor quality sleep is a major contributor to reduced quality of life and can have a negative impact on mood and energy, cognition, metabolic and immunological function, as well as lead to weight gain [3]. Sleep-related complaints are quite common in women with breast cancer, affecting around 70 percent of them [1]. In fact, more than 60 percent of women with either metastatic and non-metastatic disease are diagnosed with insomnia [1,2]. This prevalence exceeds both age-matched healthy adults and women afflicted by other cancers [3]. There are many causes for sleep disturbances in breast cancer sufferers, including age, socioeconomic status, lifestyle choices, and other co-existing medical conditions. Some of the prominent contributors to poor sleep, however, are the treatments themselves. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are associated with more sleep disturbances than hormonal treatments and surgery. In fact, surgery reduced the occurrence of insomnia from 69 percent to 42 percent in a group of women with non-metastatic breast cancer [2]. Causes for chemotherapy-related sleep disturbances include distressing sid...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs