Pain in the Neck Due to Fragmented Sleep

A recent study at John’s Hopkin’s University, published in the Journal Sleep, discovered what many of us have known for years:  lack of sleep hurts, lliterally.

What researchers called "fragmented sleep" (waking their patients up every hour for 7-8 hours) caused lower pain tolerance and more spontaneous pain in normal healthy women than keeping them awake for 36 hours straight.

This is a great case of science finally listening to MOMS, who say that waking up all night with their kids
“just hurts!”

What does this mean in the long term?  It's hard to say -- but these researchers are asking if poor sleep can be an early signal of chronic pain.