Sleep means a dreamy escape for each body and soul. But if you happen to greet each morning with a stiff neck or back pain, your joints and muscles could also be undergoing stress and strain from the position you begin your sleep in — and those you unwittingly twist later.
“People’s sleep is also disturbed because they are not comfortable,” says Dr. Shastri. “If they wake up in pain, they usually know it’s because of the way they slept, but often they think they slept strangely. They don’t realize that the pain isn’t just attributable to the sleeping position, but often because their mattress is too old or their pillow is too soft.”
Why Sleep Position Matters
It’s also common responsible morning aches and pains on old age, arthritis, or other seemingly logical explanations for why you get up feeling thus far from the perfect of boom and glow. But a key clue that sleep position or bedding is the perpetrator is waking up with back and neck pain you did not have the night before, or finding that ongoing back problems appear to worsen overnight.
“If you experience pain mostly after sleeping and there’s no other reason for the pain, it’s probably not due to arthritis or another condition,” explains Dr. Shastri. “It’s usually a modifiable thing.”
Certain sleeping positions make us more vulnerable to this scenario by putting pressure on the neck, shoulders, lower back, and hips, or by holding the stress in those parts of the body as a substitute of releasing them.
The worst offender? Sleep prone, or in your stomach, in keeping with a 2019 study within the journal BMJ Open. This belly-down pose flattens the natural curves of each spines and requires you to crank your head to 1 side, misaligning the neck with the remaining of the spine. Headaches and pain between the shoulders are frequently the result.
Meanwhile, sleeping on the lower back nearly doubles the danger of developing lower back pain, in keeping with the study. In fact, lying on the side was considered essentially the most protective position against back and neck pain.
Tips for coping with pain
The overriding goal is to aim for a “neutral” pose that aligns the pinnacle, shoulders, and hips and allows all parts of the body to rest and recuperate overnight. With this in mind, Dr. Shastri recommends these strategies for avoiding morning back and neck pain:
Change positions regularly. During those hazy, half-asleep moments within the morning, shift into one other pose. It distributes the pressure absorbed by areas of the body through the night.
Move as a unit. Align all parts of your body when changing sleeping positions. “Try to make sure your hips aren’t on one side and your torso on the other,” she says.
Put a wedge in it. Depending on whether you’re a back, side, or stomach sleeper, place a foam wedge under or between the knees or under the back to alleviate pressure in your joints.
Find the goldilocks of pillows. If it aligns your neck and head naturally, you will realize it’s good—not too soft and never too hard. “If you feel like you’re twisting your pillow to firm it up, that’s a sign you need a new one,” says Dr. Shastri.
Consider a brand new mattress. If you are over a decade old, it’s probably past its prime. Mattress showrooms make it easy to try different firmness levels before buying, and manufacturers normally offer exchange policies. Memory foam mattresses boast the good thing about adapting to your body’s pressure points, says Dr. Shastri.
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