Sleeping Positions

Are your sleeping positions causing you pain?

We don’t often think about our spines when we’re lying-in bed. But our sleep posture can help determine whether we experience pain.

Sleeping on your stomach is the worst position for your spine as it places the most pressure on your spine’s muscles and joints because it flattens the natural curve of your spine. Sleeping on your stomach also forces you to turn your neck, which can cause neck and upper back pain.

For pillow advice please visit out blog  Which pillow is right for me? — Premier Osteopaths

Below is some of the recommended sleeping positions to help ease your pain and prevent it from coming back. So, when you turn in for the night, remember these tips.

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Correct Sleeping Position: For The Lower Back

Tucking a pillow between the knees helps to keep the spine in a neutral alignment for side sleeping or sleeping on your back, like the following pictures.

Avoid sleeping on your side where one knee drops in front of the other. This twists the spine and pelvis for long periods of time as you sleep.

Your body type dictates the type of support you need. If your hips are wider than your waist, a softer mattress can accommodate the width of your pelvis and allow your spine to remain neutral, as shown. If your hips and waist are in a relatively straight line, a more rigid surface offers better support.

It is not just the lower body we need to consider when sleeping to avoid twisting, it also can come from the upper back and shoulders. When you do not have the proper pillow support for you head (the correct height to support the shoulder width) you will turn your upper body and sleep on your entire shoulder blade as seen in the picture here.

There fore having the right pillow height (for side lying in normally 2 pillows) will help to stake your shoulders and stop you rolling backwards onto your shoulder blade. Even if you are stacked with a pillow through the knees and ankles, rolling backward onto your shoulder blade will continue to twist down through the back and upset the lower back and pelvis.

If you sleep with an arm under your pillow, it is likely the pillow is not high enough, consider adding another thinner pillow for support (add gradually if you need to)

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Correct Sleeping Position: For The Neck

For side sleepers, if the pillow you are using is too low you can crush the brachial plexus at the front of the shoulder when you place it in front of your body as you sleep. The brachial plexus is the bundle of nerves that come out of the neck and down into the arms supplying the arm muscles). When the brachial plexus is crushed it can leave you waking with pins and needles or a dead arm and hand.

To prevent this, adopt two things:

1.       Assure your pillow is not too low. It is very important to make sure that the pillow you use under your head is the correct size and thickness for your body. When you lie on your side, there will be some collapsing of the shoulders as your body weight sinks into the mattress. The pillow you choose should fill up the remaining space between the mattress and your head and should provide enough support to cradle the weight of your head without causing your neck to tilt in any direction. Look for a pillow that will support the weight of your head and keep your spine in straight alignment. Use two small to medium pillows if you’re a side sleeper or one pillow if you sleep on your back.

2.       For side sleepers place a pillow in front of your body and drape your arm over it as you sleep. This keeps the area at the front of the shoulder open, preventing irritation to the brachial plexus.

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