- Do you ever wonder what sleeping position
is the best or worst? - Well, according to the Mayo Clinic. you're gonna find many
different ways to sleep and they narrowed it down to
what's gonna help you the best get the best night's sleep. - And there are three
main sleeping positions: laying on your back, your
side, or your stomach. So we're gonna talk about advantages and disadvantages of each position. - That's right, and we're
gonna show you nice little tips on how these positions
can be more comfortable. By the way, we've been
showing you over the years and this is how we sleep ourselves. - And I'm ready for bed. - (chuckles) You look ready for bed. (uptempo music) So as we stated, everyone has
their own favorite preferences on how to sleep. However, many people think
that sleeping on your back is the best way to sleep because it takes pressure off the joints. And we'll talk, show you details on that in just a little bit. However, Mike, what does Mayo tell us? - According to Mayo Clinic, sleeping on your back is problematic if you're a person that
suffers from sleep apnea. Do you wanna explain why this is, Brad? - Well, it has to do with
the position and gravity with your tongue and in your throat. It actually blocks airways
and promotes snoring and that causes less oxygen
to get into your system. Therefore, the sleep apnea machines, the CPAPs take care of that
problem is my understanding. - Now we realize that some people, that's the only way they
can really fall asleep, is on their back, so we're
gonna get into showing a proper positioning way that
may help you sleep better and not have any negative issues. - Yep. Let's go at it. All right, for those of you who really like to sleep on your back and that's the way you're gonna start, I actually am one of those. I always start on my back. It's the most comfortable. We're gonna show you
some nice tricks and tips to make sure everything goes well. Mike, go ahead. - So for the first thing, you wanna make sure you
don't have too many pillows or too thick of a pillow. As you can see right now, my head is actually kind
of flexed down in my neck. It's gonna put pressure on it. I'm gonna wake up with a neck ache. So make sure you just have
one pillow or a flatter pillow and your neck is more in a
neutral position like it is now. It's gonna be much more
comfortable to wake up. Now, another good thing is to put maybe a pillow
underneath your knees, or you can use a leg wedge
if you happen to have one like Brad is showing there. Now this is just gonna take
some stress off the knees. Obviously if you're in a
locked out position all night you can get a little aches
and pains in your legs. This prevents that and it
also relieves a little tension in your back,
- Absolutely. - keeping in a slight flexed position. Now, if you have shoulder pain, say, and you like sleeping on your back, you could take a pillow and
position it under your arm, supporting the entire arm the whole night. It'll open up that shoulder joint and take some pressure off there. You could even do both sides, I guess, if you have shoulder pain on both sides, so you're gonna be a big
pillow person when you sleep. - (chuckles) Absolutely. I agree. I've experienced this myself. I use this if I have a backache, and usually a couple hours into the night, I simply kick it off the
bed and go like this. We realize you don't
sleep in one position. Most people don't all night long. So these are nice tips and
tricks to know as things go on. Okay, let's talk about prone
or lying on your stomach. Now this is a position that Bob and I have talked
about over the years, and usually, we say try to avoid this. You can do it, but the key
is to try to keep your spine in a neutral alignment
so there's less stress throughout the spine. To start out with this,
here we have the spine. If you're lying on your stomach
and you have two pillows, like Mike has... Can you pull your arm out of there, Mike? Now if you look at his neck, it's actually extended up this
way, and we don't wanna have that kind of sustained end
range posture with sleeping. So two pillows with that is not good. And there's variations on this of course. The other thing is when
you sleep on your stomach, oftentimes, people put
their head like Mike is, looking to his right. So if you look at the
spine, it twists one way, puts that end range, all the
facet joints in the spine are locked up and jammed. That can cause pain if you're that way for
long periods of time. So ideally, you would wanna
rotate your head right and left every 20 minutes or so. Hopefully in your sleep, your
body reminds you to do that. As far as the low back,
the next big thing is there's a arch in the lumbar spine. That's normal, but it can be
overly arched, too much arch, and then the back gets like this and that also can jam the facet joints, the little joints between each vertebra. But people sleep on their stomach and are very happy to sleep that way. Mike is one of them. Talk about how you sleep without
any pain when you wake up. - So this position right now
is very uncomfortable for me. So typically when I wake up on my stomach, I oftentimes have a throw pillow on the side my head is turned to. It kind of supports my head a little bit. And you can see my right leg on this side is actually propped up. So it's not like I'm sleeping straight on my stomach like this. I'm actually kind of on my side and my stomach at the same time. This will help limit the
amount of neck rotation I have to one side if I'm
positioned more like this, and it just makes it a
little more comfortable for me personally. Now if you're having
some back pain with this, a good thing you can do
is actually put a pillow, a larger pillow underneath
your pelvis here. So you just kind of go mid
body where your trunk is, lay down like this, and then you can get a
little bit of support there and get some more neutral
spine and less arch. - And that might be a little
too low for some people. That's actually under his thighs. Can you lift up? Some people might find it,
get it under the belly, right under the lumbar area. And I think if, especially
if those people, you probably want to have just one pillow to keep that neck and a neutral spine. You'll know it. It's a position you should feel
very comfortable lying there for a period of time and not
feeling like you have to move because of discomfort or pain. Your body's telling you, if it hurts after you're
there five or 10 minutes or you fall asleep prior to that and you're gonna sleep
there for a few hours, you know, that's when you're
gonna create some pain, and so sustained uncomfortable positions that you don't really realize at night until you wake up in pain. - Yes. - And so Mike, you sleep
like this regularly? - I do, and sometimes,
- Okay. - my neck's a little stiff in the morning. (Brad laughs)
- But when I was a baby, this is the way to put 'em to sleep, so I guess it's a habit. - So blame it on your parents.
- Yep. - All right, now according
to the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Somers, he has a
whole host of evidence showing that side sleeping
is actually the best for you in regards to digestive situations and information like that. Now, there are problems
with side sleeping. I cannot side sleep very long
'cause I had shoulder pain, I get knee pain, and I
think a lot of people will. But there are easy
options to take care of it and we're gonna go through 'em right now. Like right now, Mike's shoulder might be uncomfortable because the shoulder
joint is being jammed. What were you gonna say, Mike? - I was gonna say, yeah, the first one we were gonna look at is the head and neck
and shoulder area here. Now my shoulder has to rotate out. If I was directly on my shoulder this would be very uncomfortable. - Yep, exactly. - So what you wanna do, oftentime, is get another pillow first for your head. Because oftentime with
your shoulders like this, you want two pillows in here,
take some pressure off that, and I can lay a little more normal. I never lay directly on my shoulder. That's just not how I side sleep. I typically am slightly angled here. - Let's show the trick if you actually pull that out like that. But then that kind of twists your back but it takes pressure off the shoulder. It's kind of a give and take situation. So the next thing is Bob's
famous canal sleeping where we form a canal for the shoulder. - So you can do that with a pillow. So you're gonna put it between your, basically where your
shoulder would rest here. It's gonna be on your rib cage. So now you can have a nice canal in here if you're comfortable sleeping like this. I, like many people, toss and turn so I can't lay like this very long but Bob finds it very beneficial. - That's right, and you
can use a throw pillow. I think Bob uses a throw
pillow instead of a larger one. But either way, you do what works for you. So obviously, you're gonna
need a lot of pillows if you're a side sleeper
and you're not comfortable. - Now if your shoulder is problematic on the side that is facing the ceiling you can get a pillow, typically you want a large pillow, not a short one like this,
- Here. - and you can prop it up like
here and get a good support, opening up that shoulder, relaxing it. This is most optimal if you have shoulder pain
and sleeping on your side. Now, this isn't the only
positions to look at. Say you're having hip or knee pain while you're sleeping on your side. A simple solution is a pillow. This can help with the knee. If you feel like your
ankles are rubbing too much, you can get a longer pillow,
position it in there. You wanna get a nice neutral position. Oftentimes, when you're like
this, it's putting some strain on the outside of your hip
and outside of your knee. This nice neutral position will
prevent that from happening. - There you go. So that pretty much
covers you for head to toe for side sleeping if
you have some discomfort on some of the areas. I was using a hotel this weekend and I knew as soon as I touched the bed, I wasn't gonna be comfortable. Luckily, they had lots
of pillows on the bed. I slept much better as a result of doing
tricks just like this. So it can work all over the place, keeping you happy and... But we've got one more
position to cover, right? Oh, so hold on. All right, now we also do
wanna cover for side sleepers. What's better, sleeping on your right side or your left side, or
does it matter at all? And yes, we do wanna look at
what the Mayo Clinic says, the doctor's there. Mike, can you cover it
a little bit for me? - They suggest sleeping on
the left side is optimal because the right side, you
have more internal organs which can get compressed and lead to not as good as
blood flow when you're sleeping. However, we realize if you have aches or pains
sleeping on one side, you're gonna sleep on
which side feels the best. - Right. You know, and I think the
other thing that makes more, circulation in the trunk,
which is important. But go for your left. If you can't sleep on your
left, go to the right. - Yes, pick what makes
you happy and fall asleep. - (chuckles) I know I
sleep where I want to, mostly on my back and then my right side and then I have to go back to my back 'cause it makes my back feel better. And it's a personal thing. - You said back a lot. - Yeah. Just go back to that. (both laugh) (uptempo music)
