How To Sleep with Neck Pain / Pinched Nerve in Neck | Dr. Jon Saunders

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments
Captions
You can't sleep because you have neck pain and or  a pinched nerve. What do you do? In this video,   I'm going to show you the best ways to sleep  comfortably, whether you have neck pain,   a pinched nerve, or both. Stay tuned. My name's Dr. Jon Saunders. I've been in   clinical practice for 21 years treating patients  with spinal related conditions. In this video I'm   going to discuss how you can sleep comfortably.  If you have a pinched nerve in your neck that   just won't let you fall asleep at night, I know  it can be frustrating and prevent you from getting   a good night's sleep. There are ways that allow  you to get comfortable so you can get the sleep   necessary to allow your body to heal. If you're  suffering from a pinched nerve in your neck,   you know it can be downright frustrating.  Further, it can prevent you from falling asleep   and getting a comfortable night's sleep, which  is imperative to your body's ability to heal. One   important thing you need to consider when trying  to sleep with a pinched nerve or neck pain is you   need to consider what normal alignment is. When we look at the spine from the front,   we expect and hope to see that is nice  and straight. So, we need to consider   that when choosing a pillow or the position we  sleep in. Most important for a pinched nerve,   often caused by a disc bulge or herniation, a bone  spur or tight muscles, we really want to make sure   we're trying to support that natural curve or arc  in our neck. This position is the best position to   keep the tissues in a relaxed state, meaning when  your spine is in the right alignment, it's in its   most stable position, which allows pressure to be  evenly distributed normally through disc tissue,   nerve tissue, ligaments, and muscles. So,  we really want to make sure we're trying   to maintain proper alignment and posture in  the positions we sleep. Let's get right to,   I'm going to show you the two best positions  you can sleep if you're suffering from neck   pain or pinched nerve to help you get  the best sleep you've had in weeks.  So, let's start on our back. We want to get in  a position that's going to support the natural   curve in our neck. So, a few pillows might do  a better job of this. First and foremost, we've   all seen these curve pillows. One has a thin and  one has a thicker side. When you're on your back,   typically want to use the thin or the smaller side  to help support that natural curve where the head   sits in this little cutout. One of the biggest  things to understand is your pillows are for your   neck, not your head. So, when you have a pillow  that supports your neck in a proper alignment,   it's going to take pressure off the disc and nerve  something that's going to give you some relief at   night. Another pillow you could use would be  a roll pillow. They're quite popular as well.   The same thing, you're going to put the pillow in  the middle of the neck to help support that curve.  Now because the spine is attached from top to  bottom, we want to consider what's happening   in the lower back as well. So, what I'm going  to do is demonstrate a very simple way to get   in position where we're using the best pillow to  help support the curve in your neck. You should   always start with a pillow underneath your knees  to help support your pelvis posture as well as   your lower back because your lower back's attached  to your mid back, which is attached to your neck,   it's really important to look at the whole spine  and your posture should be considered when, even   though this is video, is for relieving pressure  in your neck for a pinched nerve. We want to keep   everything else in alignment as well. So, you can  see that we're really focusing on supporting the   natural curve. If the pillow is on your head, you  can see that that would have the opposite effect,   something that would make the problem worse. So, you really want to make sure your neck is   supported in the right position. And again, you  can use a curve pillow, you can use a roll pillow,   you can even use a normal pillow, which let me  show you here, let's just change these around.   I think the biggest thing when you use a regular  pillow like this is that the edge of the pillow   needs to be between your shoulder blades. So,  you, let me show you what you shouldn't do.   You wouldn't want to have a pillow and focus on  the head because what it's doing is taking that   curve and straightening it or worse, putting it  in the opposite direction, which can really stress   the cervical nerves. What you want to do is you  want to bring the pill a little bit further down   and the most important thing here is making  sure your head is in line with your shoulder,   which is in line with your thoracic spine, keeping  it nice and straight so that you're supporting a   good posture to help alleviate any tension that's  going through the spinal nerves that's causing   that shearing pain from the neck down the arm. Now if you're like most people, you're probably   not going to stay in the same position and that's  okay. The next position we're going to demonstrate   is the side position. I'm going to show you a  couple important things that you need to avoid   in order to help take tension off the spinal nerve  that's causing that radiating pain or the neck   pain that's causing the radiation between your  shoulder blades. So, let's get to that. So, let's   get the side sleeping. When you're side sleeping,  we want to make sure the affected side is, so if   the neck pain is on the right, for example, and  the pain's going down your right arm or in between   your right shoulder blade, what you want to do is  to have that side up. So, we want the unaffected   side down. Now for this pillow, this is where  we want to change the pillow around to have the   thicker side to support the distance between  the tip of our shoulder and our ear to make   sure that when we're lying down that our head is  neutral or perpendicular, sorry to our shoulders.  And so that simply looks like this. We're  going to slide the pillow in to support the   neck and come down the unaffected arm. This is  where it gets tricky for some people. The arm   up will take tension out of the nerve and that  will be the position you wanted in for others,   you might find it needs to be on your side or  you'd put a pillow in this small part here,   uh, in front of your stomach to help support  the arm too. And so there's a variety of ways   that you need to experiment with the arm, but the  biggest thing is making sure your head is in line   with your shoulders and your thoracic cage and  that you have some support for your arm in the   right position to keep tension out of those spinal  nerves. You can see if the pillow was too thin,   your head would be in a position that would  be creating more tension in those nerves.  And if it's too fat, the same thing, you're  going to compress the nerves on the affected   right side. So, you want something, and again,  this can be a cervical pillow like this,   it can be a regular pillow, it can be a rolled  pillow between our legs and you're going to just   want to support that. One thing you don't want to  do is to make sure your head is not slipping down   into the fetal position. Again, that's going  to take the natural curve out of our neck,   something we're trying to preserve while we sleep.  And then you're going to again, manipulate the arm   with a pillow here or here that's going to get  you the best relief based on how much tension   you can reduce in those nerve roots. Now that  I've shown you the two best ways to sleep with   a pinched nerve in your neck, I want to switch  gears briefly just to give you two excellent   stretches or traction stretches you can try either  before you go to bed or when you first wake up.  Now, one or two of these may be irritating to  the condition, so you really want to test this   out. The first one, simple. You know, lie on the  edge of your bed, arms to your side and just let   your head slowly hang. You're going to relax  into this stretch up to 30 to 60 seconds. Just   visualize your head, tractioning off your upper  back to get the full effect. You can do that one   or two times either right before you go to bed  or when you first wake up. Now for some of you,   that's going to irritate it, so you want to try  the opposite traction. And so, this, we're going   to flip over, lie on our back, come to the edge  of your bed and again, slowly let your head hang   and then just relax into it. You can hold this  one for 30 to 60 seconds again and really feel   that your head is being pulled the top of your  upper back to get the full effect of the traction.  And remember if you want more specific and  efficient help with your problem. It's always   best to seek out local professional help. Try  those sleep positions tonight and let me know   how it goes as well. Which of those tractions  did you find more helpful? Put in the comments   below and let me know which one you like  the best. If you like videos like this,   maybe you'll show some support by giving me  a thumbs up. And if you're new to my channel,   maybe you'll consider subscribing by hitting the  subscribe button below and the notification bell   so you can be informed when I upload a new  video. If you're suffering with neck pain or   pinched nerve, I get it. I understand it is  frustrating. Stick around and check out some   of my videos. I'm sure you're going to find  one that's helpful for you to give you quick   relief so you can get back to living your  life without any limitations. I appreciate   you tuning in. I can't wait to see you  in my next video. Until then, stay well.
Info
Channel: Dr. Jon Saunders
Views: 39,005
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Dr. Jon Saunders, chiropractic on eagle, newmarket chiropractor, www.chirofirst.ca, L3Y 1K5, pinched nerve in neck, how to sleep with pinched nerve in neck, how to sleep with a pinched nerve, how to sleep with neck pain, how to fix a pinched nerve in neck, neck pain, neck pain relief, best sleeping position, neck stretches, cervical radiculopathy, pinched neck nerve, pinched nerve in neck and shoulder, pinched nerve
Id: t9QqW0HGIrc
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)
Published: Sun Apr 21 2024
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.