Insomnia Common with Chemotherapy

With the stress of cancer and its treatments, it’s not surprising to hear that people with cancer may experience insomnia, difficulty sleeping. But, there’s more to it than just the cancer. It could be the treatment itself for many.

It’s well known that insomnia is a troubling problem. Not being able to sleep can cause a host of other health problems, such as depression, anxiety, accidents due to fatigue, inability to fight off infections, and even a decrease in ability to regain health if already ill. Therefore, studying what may cause insomnia in different patient groups is quite important.

Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center studied 823 people who had cancer, looking at their sleeping patterns and how well they were able to sleep. What they found was that there was three times the difficulty sleeping among those with cancer than among people who don’t have cancer. Thirty seven percent of the patients reported having symptoms of insomnia, while 43% had insomnia syndrome.

Age played a role as well; younger people with cancer had a harder time than older ones. In addition, those with lung and breast cancers had the worst time sleeping. Their findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The data was gathered by assessing questionnaires that were completed by the patients. They were completed after the first two sessions of chemotherapy.

It’s not surprising to learn that people with cancer may have trouble sleeping. What needs to be done now is to find ways to help them, because someone battling a serious disease needs all the resources he or she can gather, and you need sleep for that.

~~~