Sleep is an important part of physical and mental health. While we sleep, the brain and body do a number of important jobs that help us stay in good health and function at our best.
Getting the sleep we need:
There are two main phases of sleep, and both are needed in order to get "a good night's sleep." The two main phases of sleep are rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM):
The phases of sleep repeat during the night in a cycle of a non-REM phase followed by a REM phase. Each cycle lasts about 90 minutes and is repeated 4 to 6 times during 7 to 8 hours of sleep.
Normal sleep patterns differ from person to person. The amount of sleep you need to feel rested may be less or more than others need. If sleep is interrupted or does not last long enough, the phases of sleep are not completed and the brain cannot finish all the tasks that help restore the body and mind. There are five major types of sleep disorders that affect normal sleep.
Sleep disorders keep you from having a good night's sleep. This may make it hard for you to stay alert and involved in activities during the day. Sleep disorders can cause problems for people with cancer. You may not be able to remember treatment instructions and may have trouble making decisions. Being well-rested can improve energy and help you cope with side effects of cancer and treatment.
Sleep problems that go on for a long time may increase the risk of anxiety or depression.
As many as half of people with cancer have problems sleeping. The sleep disorders most likely to affect people with cancer are insomnia and an abnormal sleep-wake cycle.
There are many reasons you may have trouble sleeping, including:
If you have a tumor, it may cause the following problems that make it hard to sleep:
Common cancer treatments and drugs can affect normal sleep patterns. How well you sleep may be affected by:
Long-term use of certain drugs may cause insomnia. Stopping or decreasing the use of certain drugs can also affect normal sleep. Other side effects of drugs and treatments that may affect the sleep-wake cycle include the following:
Getting a normal night’s sleep in the hospital is difficult. The following may affect your sleep in a hospital:
Getting sleep during a hospital stay may also be affected by anxiety and age.
Stress, anxiety, and depression are common reactions to learning you have cancer, receiving treatments, and being in the hospital. These are common causes of insomnia. For more information, see Depression.
People with cancer can have sleep disorders that are caused by other health problems. Conditions such as snoring, headaches and daytime seizures increase the chance of having a sleep disorder.
An assessment is done to find problems that may be causing the sleep disorder and how it affects your life. People with mild sleep disorders may be irritable and unable to concentrate. People with moderate sleep disorders can be depressed and anxious. These sleep disorders may make it hard for you to stay alert and involved in activities during the day. You may not be able to remember treatment instructions and may have trouble making decisions. Being well-rested can improve energy and help you cope with side effects of cancer and treatment.
People with cancer should have assessments done from time to time because sleep disorders may become more or less severe over time.
Your doctor will do a physical exam and take a medical history that includes:
You and your family can tell your doctor about your sleep history and patterns of sleep.
A polysomnogram is a group of recordings taken during sleep that show:
This information helps the doctor find the cause of your sleeping problems.
Sleep disorders often occur along with cancer-related fatigue and may be related. Sleep disorders that are caused by side effects of the cancer or cancer treatment may be helped by relieving the symptoms of those side effects. It's important to talk about your sleep problems with your family and the health care team so education and support can be given. Supportive care may improve your quality of life and ability to sleep.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps reduce anxiety about getting enough sleep. You learn to change negative thoughts and beliefs about sleep into positive thoughts and images, in order to fall asleep more easily. CBT helps replace the anxiety of “I need to sleep” with the idea of “just relax.” You learn how to change sleep habits that keep you from sleeping well. If in-person CBT sessions with a health professional are not available, video CBT sessions have been shown to be helpful. CBT may include the following:
When you have sleep problems for a long time, just getting ready for bed or getting into bed to sleep may cause you to start worrying that you will have another sleepless night. That worry then makes it very hard to fall asleep. Stimulus control can help you learn to connect getting ready for bed and being in bed only with being asleep. By using the bed and bedroom only when you're sleepy, the bed and sleep are linked in your mind. Stimulus control may include the following changes in your sleeping habits:
Sleep restriction decreases the time you spend in bed sleeping. This makes you more likely to feel sleepy the next night. The time you can set aside for sleeping is increased when your sleep improves.
Relaxation therapy is used to relieve muscle tension and stress, lower blood pressure, and control pain. It may involve tensing and relaxing muscles throughout the body. It is often used with guided imagery (focusing the mind on positive images) and meditation (focusing thoughts). Self-hypnosis at bedtime can also help you feel relaxed and sleepy. Relaxation therapy exercises can make it easier for stimulus control and sleep restriction to work for you.
Good sleep habits help you fall asleep more easily and stay asleep. Habits and routines that may help improve sleep include the following:
A comfortable bed and bedroom
Making your bed and bedroom more comfortable may help you sleep. Some ways to increase bedroom comfort include:
Regular bowel and bladder habits
Regular bowel and bladder habits reduce the number of times you have to get up during the night. Waking during the night to go to the bathroom may be reduced by doing the following:
Diet and exercise
The following diet and exercise habits may improve sleep:
Other habits that may improve sleep include:
Hospital routines
Getting a good night's sleep in a hospital or other care facility can be hard to do. The good sleep habits listed above may help you. As a hospital patient, you may also:
Treatment without drugs does not always work. Sometimes cognitive behavioral therapies are not available or they do not help. Also, some sleep disorders are caused by conditions that need to be treated with drugs, such as hot flashes, pain, anxiety, depression, or mood disorders. The drug used will depend on your type of sleep problem (such as trouble falling asleep or trouble staying asleep) and other medicines you're taking. All of your other medicines and health conditions will affect which sleeping medicines are safe and will work well for you.
Some drugs that help you sleep should not be stopped suddenly. Suddenly stopping them may cause nervousness, seizures, and a change in the REM phase of sleep that increases dreaming, including nightmares. This change in REM sleep may be dangerous for people with peptic ulcers or heart conditions.
If pain disturbs your sleep, treatment to relieve the pain will be used before sleep medicines are used. Pain drugs, other drugs being taken, and any other health conditions may affect which sleeping medicines are prescribed.
It's normal for older people to have some insomnia. Changes related to age can cause lighter sleep, waking up more often during the night, and sleeping less total time. If you are an older person with cancer who is having trouble sleeping, the doctor will look for the specific causes, such as:
Treating sleeping problems without drugs is tried first. The following may help improve sleep in older people with cancer:
Medicine may be used if non-drug treatments don't work. The doctor will look at all your medicines and health conditions before choosing a sleeping medicine. For some people, doctors will suggest a sleep disorder clinic for treatment.
People who have surgery on the jaw may develop sleep apnea, which is a sleep disorder that causes the person to stop breathing for 10 seconds or more during sleep. Plastic surgery to rebuild the jaw may help prevent sleep apnea.
Use our clinical trial search to find NCI-supported cancer clinical trials that are accepting patients. You can search for trials based on the type of cancer, the age of the patient, and where the trials are being done. General information about clinical trials is also available.
For more information from the National Cancer Institute about sleep problems, see the following:
Physician Data Query (PDQ) is the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) comprehensive cancer information database. The PDQ database contains summaries of the latest published information on cancer prevention, detection, genetics, treatment, supportive care, and complementary and alternative medicine. Most summaries come in two versions. The health professional versions have detailed information written in technical language. The patient versions are written in easy-to-understand, nontechnical language. Both versions have cancer information that is accurate and up to date and most versions are also available in Spanish.
PDQ is a service of the NCI. The NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is the federal government’s center of biomedical research. The PDQ summaries are based on an independent review of the medical literature. They are not policy statements of the NCI or the NIH.
This PDQ cancer information summary has current information about the causes and treatment of sleep disorders. It is meant to inform and help patients, families, and caregivers. It does not give formal guidelines or recommendations for making decisions about health care.
Editorial Boards write the PDQ cancer information summaries and keep them up to date. These Boards are made up of experts in cancer treatment and other specialties related to cancer. The summaries are reviewed regularly and changes are made when there is new information. The date on each summary ("Updated") is the date of the most recent change.
The information in this patient summary was taken from the health professional version, which is reviewed regularly and updated as needed, by the PDQ Supportive and Palliative Care Editorial Board.
A clinical trial is a study to answer a scientific question, such as whether one treatment is better than another. Trials are based on past studies and what has been learned in the laboratory. Each trial answers certain scientific questions in order to find new and better ways to help cancer patients. During treatment clinical trials, information is collected about the effects of a new treatment and how well it works. If a clinical trial shows that a new treatment is better than one currently being used, the new treatment may become "standard." Patients may want to think about taking part in a clinical trial. Some clinical trials are open only to patients who have not started treatment.
Clinical trials can be found online at NCI's website. For more information, call the Cancer Information Service (CIS), NCI's contact center, at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
PDQ is a registered trademark. The content of PDQ documents can be used freely as text. It cannot be identified as an NCI PDQ cancer information summary unless the whole summary is shown and it is updated regularly. However, a user would be allowed to write a sentence such as “NCI’s PDQ cancer information summary about breast cancer prevention states the risks in the following way: [include excerpt from the summary].”
The best way to cite this PDQ summary is:
PDQ® Supportive and Palliative Care Editorial Board. PDQ Sleep Disorders. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute. Updated <MM/DD/YYYY>. Available at: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/side-effects/sleep-disorders-pdq. Accessed <MM/DD/YYYY>. [PMID: 26389249]
Images in this summary are used with permission of the author(s), artist, and/or publisher for use in the PDQ summaries only. If you want to use an image from a PDQ summary and you are not using the whole summary, you must get permission from the owner. It cannot be given by the National Cancer Institute. Information about using the images in this summary, along with many other images related to cancer can be found in Visuals Online. Visuals Online is a collection of more than 3,000 scientific images.
The information in these summaries should not be used to make decisions about insurance reimbursement. More information on insurance coverage is available on Cancer.gov on the Managing Cancer Care page.
More information about contacting us or receiving help with the Cancer.gov website can be found on our Contact Us for Help page. Questions can also be submitted to Cancer.gov through the website’s E-mail Us.