Sleep quality
‘If I could just get a good night’s sleep, doctor, everything would be so much better.’ I hear this often and almost always agree. In fact, I often sense it myself when feeling unwell. A recent Spanish study sought to test it scientifically, investigating the association between sleep quality and low back pain in routine clinical practice.1 A total of 461 patients with lower back pain were recruited from both primary and secondary care, and followed up after 3 months. Patients who had an improvement in sleep during the follow-up period also had improvements in lower back pain and disability. However, importantly, the quality of sleep at baseline did not …