Book Excerpt | How Treating Pain Can Help You Sleep

Areas in your brain which recognize pain signals also regulate sleep. Persistent pain causes lack of sleep or impacts its quality and, in turn, poor sleep prevents chronic inflammation from shutting off. Recently, there has been more interest and research in the bidirectional aspect of sleep and pain.

Symptoms of conditions like fibromyalgia include fatigue, impaired sleep and cognitive difficulties, but the main result of the disease is widespread chronic pain.

Can Solving the Vata Puzzle Be the Answer to Pain and Sleep Problems?

Joint pains in the hands begin with excess vata in the whole body. The imbalance begins with weak agni and vata-aggravating practices. This can occur due to eating cold and dry foods. As vata increases, agni becomes even more weak. The weak agni then causes accumulation of ama, or metabolic toxins. This begins within the digestive tract.

The joints are gathering spaces of vata dosha. Ama is sticky. It shares qualities with kapha, which is responsible for cushioning the joint. There is agni within cells too. If agni is weak in any of the tissues, excess vata and ama penetrate, and start to dry the joints of the hand. Over time, the impact becomes severe.

One way to identify vata in the joints is if the joints feel cold, or if they often make popping and cracking sounds. Remember that when vata is aggravated, it brings with it all kinds of sleep challenges. This includes pain as well.

To soothe vata in the joints, you must focus on calming vata overall, as mentioned in the chapter on sound and the adrenals. Locally, you can add warming and soothing herbal oils. Dhanwantaram, Mahanarayana tailam, Murivenna, or warm sesame oil, are wonderful for this. Massage your hands after you have applied warm sesame oil to the whole body to calm vata dosha. Maintaining a circadian rhythm that is in harmony with the earth's diurnal rhythm is critical to calming vata dosha. It is also key that the foods you eat are soft, warm and cooked, and not cold or dry. It is helpful to first eliminate the aggravating factors such as caffeine. Without eliminating them, other protocols may not be as effective.

How You Can Achieve a Balanced Immune System

While there are many immune culprits, there are also several ways to support immune function and lower inflammation. These can be wonderful resources on your journey of lowering chronic inflammation. 

• An anti-inflammatory diet is step one. The antioxidants in colourful plant foods have potent powers to fight any free radical damage within your body. 
• Try a short healing phase where you reduce glutamates. These are compounds found in MSG, yeast, soy sauce, parmesan, sauerkraut, gelatine, peas, corn and tomatoes. Remove these for a trial period of two to four weeks and observe how you feel. These are best kept away. Nightshades like tomatoes, potatoes and peppers have benzoic acid, which is a toxin that causes joint pain. In the event of pain, it is best to remove them.
• Spices like ginger, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, nutmeg, clove, cardamom, rosemary and thyme fire agni and decrease inflammation, preserving the brain's fatty acid integrity and helping to lower pain. Remember to simmer the spices in fat to improve the digestibility of food.
• Vitamins A, C, D, E, B2, B6 and B12, folic acid, iron and selenium are important for the immune system. 
• The best way to include all the nutrients that you need is through a varied and colourful diet.
• Reduce or eliminate alcohol. It aggravates vata and pitta.
• Improve oxygen flow. Get enough exercise, including inversions from yoga if you do not have high blood pressure, stand on one leg and go for long walks.
• Meditation is magical! It has been proven to lower brain inflammation, help nerve recovery and improve resilience. 
• Zinc is an immune wonder. Get it from pumpkin seeds, squash seeds, sunflower seeds, seafood, oysters, liver, turkey, crab, herring, organ meats, mushrooms, soybeans, eggs, rice, sesame seeds and legumes.
• Omega-3 is not optional. You can get ALA from greens, flax, chia, hemp, ghee and walnuts. You need the EPA and DHA from fatty fish, algae or full-fat ghee.
• Love, learn, laugh. Love increases oxytocin and reduces anxiety, supporting pain and inflammation reduction. Learning new things or doing puzzles are known to improve neurogenesis, or the production of new nerve cells, helping to lower brain inflammation and reduce pain. Laughing reduces stress and increases neurotransmitters like beta-endorphins, which are your body's natural painkillers.

Supporting Recovery from Pain to Improve Sleep

When it comes to pain and sleep, as is evident by now, it can be a delicate situation for the chicken or the egg. Which came first? Where do you begin? Poor sleep can be very disruptive to pain, but it's much harder to force sleep than it is to work on your system and reduce pain. Focus on strengthening agni and pacifying vata.

References: 

• Haack, M., Simpson, N., Sethna, N., Kaur, S., & Mullington, J. (2020). Sleep deficiency and chronic pain: potential underlying mechanisms and clinical implications. Neuropsychopharmacology: Official Publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 45(1), 205-216. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-019-0439-z
• Minich, D.M. (2019). A review of the science of colorful, plant-based food and practical strategies for 'eating the rainbow'. Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, 201(2125070). https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/2125070
• Kunnumakkara, A.B., Sailo, B.L., Banik, K., Harsha, C., Prasad, S., Gupta, S.C., Bharti, A. C., & Aggarwal, B.B. (2018). Chronic diseases, inflammation, and spices: how are they linked?. Journal of Translational Medicine, 16(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-018-1381-2
• Maggini, S., Pierre, A., & Calder, P.C. (2018). Immune function and micronutrient requirements change over the life course. Nutrients, 10(10), 1531. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10101531
• Black, D.S., & Slavich, G.M. (2016). Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373(1), 13-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.12998
• Prasad, A.S. (2014). Zinc: an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent: role of zinc in degenerative disorders of aging. Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology: Organ of the Society for Minerals and Trace Elements (GMS), 28(4), 364-371. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtemb.2014.07.019
• Gutiérrez, S., Svahn, S.L., & Johansson, M.E. (2019). Effects of omega-3 fatty acids on immune cells. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 20(20), 5028. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms20205028
• Carter, C.S., & Porges, S.W. (2013). The biochemistry of love: an oxytocin hypothesis. EMBO Reports, 14(1), 12-16. https://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2012.191
• Shors, T.J., Anderson, M.L., Curlik, D.M., & Nokia, M.S. (2012). Use it or lose it: how neurogenesis keeps the brain fit for learning. Behavioural Brain Research, 227(2), 450-458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2011.04.023 

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