In a study from Zhejiang University, scientists found that insomnia could cause lower back pain and vice versa.
Lower back pain is sometimes associated with injuries, chronic back issues, medical conditions, the menstrual cycle or pregnancy, and other underlying physiological causes.
Some studies have found associations between lower back pain and different psychological and social factors, including gender, body weight, smoking habits and mood disorders.
In the current study, the team carried out a study exploring these recent findings further, by trying to better understand the relationship between sleep and lower back pain.
Their findings suggest that there is a bidirectional causal link between insomnia and lower back pain, with each potentially causing the other.
The team examined the self-reported and genetic data of over 400,000 people of European ancestry, collected as part of the genome-wide association study (GWAS) by the UK Biobank.
These people had completed genetic tests and answered a series of questions about their sleep patterns.
The researchers’ analyses focused on different factors associated with poor sleep quality, including insomnia, long sleep duration, short sleep duration, and daytime sleepiness.
Their findings highlighted a bidirectional causal relationship between insomnia and lower back pain, meaning that insomnia can cause lower back pain and vice versa.
In addition, they found that lower back pain could cause daytime sleepiness, although not the opposite.
In the future, these results could inspire further studies exploring the link between poor sleep and insomnia, potentially incorporating people with other ethnic and genetic backgrounds.
In addition, the work could promote the exploration of interventions for lower back pain that also target insomnia and unhealthy sleeping patterns.
The team says sleep improvement may thus be important in the comprehensive management of lower back pain.
If you care about sleep, please read studies about herb that could help you sleep well at night, and these drugs could lower severity of sleep apnea by one third.
For more information about sleep, please see recent studies about sleep apnea linked to increased risk of dementia, and results showing this drug can treat sleep loss and insomnia.
The study was conducted by Ge Luo et al and published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.
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