The best sleeping position for back pain, neck pain, and sciatica - Tips from a physical therapist

what's up guys hey Jared Beck strand here doctor of physical therapy tone Italian calm coming at you today with five of my favorite tips to help you to get your best night's sleep ever this one's gonna be especially relevant for those of you who might be experiencing back or neck pain let's get to it right now all right you guys hey thanks so much for joining me today on tone and tighten just a quick plug if you haven't subscribed to our channel already for more content like this I hope you take the chance to do that you can hit that subscribe button down below also if you find the information that I share in this video helpful do me a favor hit that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments while you're watching this video leave those down below and I'll get to those just as soon as I can as well okay so let's get into this five of my favorite tips to help you to the best night's sleep ever as a doctor of physical therapy this is a question that I get asked a lot is you know what is the best sleep posture what's the best sleep position how can I wake up in the morning without my neck or my back hurting so I wanted to share some of those tips with you guys today and so tip number one the best sleep position for you is the one that you find the most comfortable but then also that holds your spine in as neutral a position as possible now when I talk about neutral spine here's my spine model right here you've got three major curves that were worried about it or that we're worried about right now you're looking at it a lateral view from the side he's looking that way and so you'll see that you've got one curve here in your lower back one curving kind of your middle back and then this is your neck right here it kind of curves back this way you'll see that if I turn him around so he's looking that way you're staring straight at his back we're nice and straight right here so we've got curves this way but we're nice and straight this way the best the best sleep position the best sleep posture for you is going to be whatever holds your spine in this neutral spine position so you'll see we need a little support here we need a little support here and we need something that's going to keep it straight this way the other thing that I'll mention is that we don't want anything that rotates it in this position either big for stomach sleepers especially and so that's tip number one whatever this is the most comfortable and whatever can hold your spine in that neutral position that's what I'm going to recommend tip number two is to get into that correct sleeping posture you have to have the right amount of support so speaking specifically of your mattress and your pillow in this case and so with mattresses you're supposed to replace your mattress every eight to ten years if you haven't done so in the last decade it might be time to look into that mattresses do wear out they lose their ability to support your body especially you know the technology these days behind mattresses has improved a lot in the last 10 years and so you might consider looking into that you might consider getting a new mattress and the other thing is your pillow you want a pillow that again is going to support that neutral spine position you don't want it to be well depending on your sleep posture whether you sleep on your back or whether you sleep on your stomach or whether you sleep on your site you want a pillow that's going to support your spine in that neutral position and so I'm gonna run you through a couple of those tips and tricks today now let's get into my last three tips have to deal specifically with different sleeping postures and so I'm gonna go get my wife she's gonna demonstrate some of these for you while I talk you through these remaining three tips alright so once again I've brought in my lovely assistant you guys know my wife all too well if you've watched any of my other YouTube videos you're such a good sport you don't pay me enough it's true okay so let's get into these remaining three tips the first thing I'm gonna have Camille do is lay down on her stomach so we'll get some of these pillows out of the way I know you're the worst and so my tip for those of you who lay on your stomach to sleep is stop doing it immediately anatomically speaking this is the worst posture this is the worst position that you can sleep in throughout the night Camille she'll always fall asleep on her side but she always wakes up on her stomach and it hurts right now even and the reasons why I hate this is because there's no way to get into that neutral spine position on your stomach first of all when we talk about her her neck you have to breathe believe it or not when you're asleep you have to breathe so in order to do that you've got to turn your neck either one way or the other so you're sleeping all night in this rotated position the other thing that I hate about this is a lot of times your stomach isn't very well supported so it kind of sags into the bed creating this excessive Bo in your back if you wake up with a tight or a pitched back and you sleep on your stomach that's the reason why finally the last thing I hate about this is it puts a lot of pressure on your internal organs weight on your lungs affects breathing weight on your guts affects digestion things like that basically tip number three you guys don't sleep on your stomach let's get into a little bit better posture I'm gonna have her roll over onto her right side and let's talk about sleeping on your side for a second again the goal is to achieve as neutral a spine position as you can let's look at the three areas that are going to affect that so specifically her neck hurt her back her torso and then what's happening down here at her hips first of all with her neck let's say that her pillow is too full I'm gonna double that one up and you can see what that does to her neck all of a sudden her head is way too high and it creates this crick in her neck conversely I stole my daughter this is my youngest daughter's pillow this is like the flattest pillow you guys have ever seen in your life if she's sleeping on a pillow that's too flat you see that her head is dropping down too far we've got that crick in her neck again so the right pillow for you is going to be the one that again maintains your neck in more of a neutral spine position now I went got this one on purpose you guys this one's actually my pillow it's one that I found it's you can get it on Amazon what I'll do is I'll leave the link in the description to this video too this pillow I actually love this pillow just because you go ahead and well are you comfortable asleep just because this pillow is actually customizable I can actually unzip it right here it's got a liner on the inside as well and it's actually filled up with shredded memory foam and it came with additional memory foam and so you can actually put more stuffing into it or take the stuffing out of it depending on what your your posture needs are if you've got a smaller frame then you might need less stuffing if you've got a bigger frame you might need more stuffing and then depending on if you're a side sleeper or a back sleeper same thing applies you might need more or less so the sole reason that I like this pillow not sponsored or anything by it by this company the sole reason I like this hello is because you can customize it you can you can fill it up or you can kind of flatten it out depending on your needs and so when you're sleeping on your side that's the first thing that I'm worried about the next thing I'm worried about is right here a lot of times when you sleep on your side again depending on the support you get from your mattress your your back your lower back can be shrinking kind of falling down into the mattress if you don't have that support there so what you can do is I'm gonna take my flattest pillow that I have and I'm actually gonna kiss sneak that under your side babe there you go just like that and all of a sudden now we have a little more support again her shoulders and her hips are a little wider and so if we need more support but I said that totally wrong shoulders and hips are wider than her torso let's put it that way and so if she needs a little more support under her back that's how we're gonna achieve it you can actually get pillows that are designed specifically for this purpose to be put under your torso for side sleepers to maintain that neutral position again check out the link that I've got in the description to this video for that okay spot number three that we're worried about is right down here a lot of times when we sleep on our sides if your knees are pressed together it puts a lot of pressure on your knee joint but then also this top leg as it falls down towards the table pulls through the hip and that in turn can pull through the lower back and so a lot of times to sleep on your side like this isn't very comfortable and so what we do I should have one more fill around here somewhere what we're gonna do is get one more pillow and put that one right between her knees and so now between those three things the proper support here the proper support here and the proper support here I've got her back in that nice no totally neutral position so those are some things that you can play around with to kind of find what might work for you it might be one of these things it might be all three of these things playing with it until you find again that sweet spot for your specific needs okay let's get rid of these two and then I'm gonna have you roll over onto your back okay okay when we talk about sleeping on our back I mean nothing changes with our objectives we want to maintain that neutral spine position and so you'll see that with this pillow that she's got this one's actually too full and so she's got her neck kind of in this forward flexed position because there's too much stuffing in that pillow conversely I'm going to give this teeny tiny flat pillow again if we put that one under her neck it's it's maybe a little bit better position but the fact that I don't like is that there's no support directly under her neck she's kind of in this extended position that's gonna create this crick in her neck if she stays there all night so what we would need to do is probably something kind of between this and that where her neck is supported but it's in a neutral position it's not pushed too far forward and it's not falling too far backwards and so again based on your unique individual needs that's the first place that I'll typically look when we talk about you know back pain or neck pain from sleeping on my back and the last thing that I like to look at with this is again what's going on in her lower back right now she's in what we would call an anterior pelvic tilt posture just because her legs are out totally flat your hip flexors you've got one muscle in particular it's called your psoas major it's a hip flexor that attaches from the front of your hip to the small of your back if that one's tight and if your legs are extended out straight what that's gonna do is rock your hips forward creating a big space here in your lower back now sleeping like that all night long can be uncomfortable can cause pain in your lower back and so how we fix that is we've got to unlock that so as and we do that by her flexing her knees now just her doing that again has alleviated that pressure on her hip flexor taking the tension out of her back now all of a sudden her back is in this nice more neutral position again we want there to be a little bit of an arch there but not a lot of arch there in order to support that what I'll typically tell people is grab one or two pillows kind of put those right under your knees now as she lays out flat that takes a lot of that pressure again off of the hips and off of the bad when we combine that with the right pillow those are the those are the things that I look at when we recognize recommendations for those of you who might sleep on your back okay you guys and so that's about it so those are all the tips that I've got for you again we talked about posture and position we talked about the proper support with pillows and with mattresses and then gave you kind of some tips and advice that you can hopefully use depending on which posture you like to sleep in hopefully it's not on your stomach we're gonna get rid of that one but if you sleep on your side or on your back these are some things that are going to help to alleviate the stress on your joints alleviate the stress on your muscles hopefully help you to get a better night's sleep and then also not wake up in as much pain in the morning and so if you guys found this helpful to it do me a big favor hit that thumbs up button down below also subscribe to totem tight and if you haven't done so already if you have questions or comments leave those down below and I'll get to those as soon as I can you might hit that share button down there to share this video with someone that you care about and until next time you guys we'll see you right back here on tone and tighten [Music]

Channel: Tone and Tighten

Views: 6,293,856

Rating: 4.9210663 out of 5

Keywords: best sleeping position for back pain, how to sleep with back pain, best sleep posture for back pain, best sleep posture for neck pain, best sleeping position for neck pain, physical therapy, best sleeping position for sciatica, best sleeping position for sciatic nerve pain, best sleeping position, jared beckstrand, tone and tighten, how to sleep with sciatica, how to sleep with neck pain, how to sleep more comfortably, how to sleep better, how to sleep with sciatica pain

Id: -Qxmc4E7IwA

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2019