How To Sleep With Low Back Pain and Sciatica - WORKS FAST!

[Music] what's up guys jared bechtran here doctor of physical therapy tonintiten.com and in this video i want to share with you a few simple tips and advice on how you can sleep better and wake up with less pain despite your lower back pain and whatever sciatica or sciatic nerve pain that you might be experiencing now as a physical therapist i can't tell you how many times i've been working with a patient and then we've been making good progress and then one morning they come in and they'll say oh my gosh my back or my leg is all lit up and i'll say well what happened what did you do and they'll say well i don't know i must have slept on it wrong or i just woke up like this and then the ensuing conversation is usually about how to sleep correctly through the night to minimize those experiences and to decrease those instances and so that is the same information that i want to share with you i'm going to tell you how to sleep through the night again postures positions tips and advice so that you can sleep with less irritation to your lower back and to your nerves to decrease that sciatic nerve pain that you might be experiencing to rest better through the night and then also to wake up with less pain now what is the best position to sleep in if you have low back pain or sciatic nerve pain i tell people there are only two criteria it's the one that you can sleep in comfortably and that holds your spine in as neutral a position as possible your spine is capable of motion in three different directions it moves forward and backwards it can bend side to side and it can also rotate when you're sleeping you don't want to spend hours at a time in one of those end ranges of position and so we need to give you some tips we need to give you some advice we need to show you what postures that you can sleep in to keep your spine as neutral as possible now how do we hold that neutral position you see that i've got a few pillows here your body has curves and in order to hold your spine in a neutral position we need to be able to support those curves the easiest way to do that is with pillows that being said a lot of people will comment in videos that i shoot like this and say i could never sleep with all of those pillows or yeah it's okay to fall asleep in that position but i toss and i turn at night and i never wake up in that right position my advice to you would be just give this a try okay you've got nothing to lose with this and yeah people do toss and turn and they do move at night but what i found is if we can get you in the right position to start and you can spend at least those first couple of hours in a good position that usually goes a long way in helping you to feel better by the morning so that being said let's jump into this tips advice postures positions coming your way right now let's get my least favorite sleeping position out of the way first this is you stomach sleepers out there now why is this my least favorite sleeping position well it's for the reasons that i mentioned in the introduction you need to be able to hold your spine in a neutral position there's no way to do that on your stomach especially up in your neck you have to really rotate and maximally rotate one way or the other and then spend a lot of time in that position but when we talk about the lower back there's just not good support under your stomach typically what happens is your stomach sinks into the mattress causing your lower back to arch excessively so it's spending all night or hours on end in this extended position the other thing that happens is if your hamstrings are tight they can pull on your pelvis as your legs are extended out fully straight below you ultimately it's just not my favorite position however for those of you who say well i have to sleep on my stomach that's the only way that i can sleep let me see if i can at least offer you a few pieces of advice so the first thing we need to address is keeping your lower back in a more neutral position we don't want it bowed we want to stay a little bit flatter what we can do is get one pillow and put that right under your pelvis right under your torso to hold your back out of that extension the other thing that i like is another pillow down here below your shins that causes a little bit of bend in your knee and will just help to unlock those hamstrings and decreasing the strain on your pelvis if you have to sleep on your stomach try these two pillows out and i hope that they help next let me see if i can help you side sleepers out there those of you who sleep on your side this is actually my preferred method of sleeping let me see if i can help you out now the biggest issue that i see here comes from one anatomical fact and that is your hips are typically wider than your torso and always wider than your knees when you lay down on your side what happens is your torso tends to fall down into the bed or the mattress that you're sleeping on your hips stay up a little bit higher and then your knees fall down together what that does is it creates this natural side bend motion that you sleep all night in and so we're bending at our lower back we've got increased pressure on our hip and increased pressure on our knees as they're both sandwiched together so what's the solution here well we need a little more support under our torso and then we definitely need support between our knees in order to keep our legs in a little bit better position so you get this with these two pillows just like this so first i've got kind of a flat pillow right here that as i lay down on my side you'll see that now that is supporting my torso and keeping it in more of a straight line up on top of my pelvis the other pillow that i'm going to grab is just another one right here down in between my knees and as i put it in that position all of a sudden that decreases the angle on my hips puts less stress on the hip bones itself and on the hip joint but then also keeps my knees apart decreasing the pressure on my knees as well so for you side sleepers out there pillow under your torso pillow between your knees see how that one feels of course i would never forget about those of you who prefer to sleep on your back let's see if i can give you some lower back pain tips as well now the biggest issue that i run into in back sleepers with lower back pain comes from hip flexor tightness when you sleep on your back you do so with your legs fully extended out straight below you if you have hip flexor tightness and honestly the majority of us out there do they pull on your pelvis all night long they pull it into what we would call an anterior pelvic tilt which causes extension through your back which is just not a very good position to be in and so if you have lower back pain or sciatic nerve pain and prefer to sleep on your back what we need to do is just unlock those hip flexors to help you to sleep better and to help you wake up with less pain how do we do that the simplest way is just with a couple of pillows right under the knee so i'm going to lay down on my back and just put those pillows underneath right there you'll see that what that does is introduces just a slight bend into my hips unlocks those hip flexors decreasing the pull on my pelvis and enables me to keep my back a little bit flatter without so much arch in my back now what i always recommend to patients is try that out with a couple of pillows if that's something that you really like if that's something that helps you out you can also get these larger wedges and these are really good for back sleepers you put these up under your knees and they tend to stay in place and be a little more comfortable than just your traditional pillow if you're interested in something like this check the link in the description to this video i've got this one linked right down there and i hope that helps you out of course if you try any of the tips in this video i would love to hear from you come back leave me a comment let me know how it went let me know if it helped you to sleep better i hope that it did if you're interested in more great videos to help you to sleep better through the night here are two of my favorite of course if you haven't subscribed to tone and titan yet hit the circle button over here to do that i would love to see you back for more future videos until next time see you again on tone and tight

Channel: Tone and Tighten

Views: 262,377

Keywords: How to sleep with lower back pain, how to sleep with sciatica pain, how to sleep with lower back pain and sciatica, how to sleep with lower back pinched nerve, how to sleep with lower back pain, how to sleep with low back pain, Lower back pain sleeping position, best sleeping position for back pain, best sleeping position for lower back pain, best sleeping position for sciatica, physical therapy, tone and tighten, jared beckstrand, back pain

Id: SXhB-PwYlpU

Length: 8min 6sec (486 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021