How much does sleep matter when you are recovering from an injury?
Recovery from musculoskeletal injuries is a process that depends on many factors.
You may already know that recovery depends on where the injury is, how long you have had it, the extent of tissue damage, how consistently you exercise, nutrition and many other factors.
Sleep also affects how quickly and how well you recover.
From high-performance athletes to older patients with chronic pain, sleep helps injured tissues recover faster and better in 4 ways.
1) Energy availability
During sleep, most organs need less energy, using only what is essential to function.
This allows the body to redirect a significant amount of energy towards healing, cellular renewal and new cell formation.
Injured tissues also benefit from this process, allowing them to remove damaged cells and replace them with healthy ones.
Better-quality sleep, for long enough, helps injury recovery progress further.
2) Growth hormone production
Growth hormone is responsible for producing new cells, as happens during muscle growth, for example.
Sleep is one way in which growth hormone is produced.
During rest, hormonal signals prompt the body to produce more growth hormone to support new cell formation.
Areas undergoing healing and regeneration receive large quantities of this hormone, significantly accelerating recovery.
3) Prolactin production
Prolactin is a hormone with anti-inflammatory properties that contributes considerably to reducing pain and other symptoms of musculoskeletal injuries.
Prolactin is released mainly during deep sleep and distributed to inflamed areas.
Uninterrupted deep sleep is therefore important.
4) Blood circulation
Sleep is an excellent opportunity for the body to send more blood to tissues undergoing repair.
Notably, reduced brain activity can free up as much as 40% of the blood supply.
This quantity can increase blood flow to a regenerating musculoskeletal structure, providing oxygen and nutrients.
Sleep – your great ally
Sleep is a powerful ally in recovery from musculoskeletal conditions.
Enough good-quality sleep at night can act as a catalyst for recovery.
All you need to do is enjoy enough sleep, at the right temperature and in the right position.
