How I Fixed My Sleep Posture for Better Rest
When we think of good posture, we usually associate it with sitting up straight or not slouching in our seat, but what about sleeping posture?
As someone with excellent standing posture, I recently realized that my sleep was a complete disaster. I often wake up in the morning with aching limbs or a stiff neck, due to the positions I contort myself into at night. Often, I sleep with my arms crossed under my head or with one arm crushed under the weight of my body. Sometimes my circulation is so bad that I wake up with a dead arm full of pins and needles and I have to shake it to bring it back to life.
My poor sleeping posture wasn’t just affecting my sleep, it was also affecting my overall health. People can train to have better standing posture, so why not apply the same logic to your sleeping position?
To see if I could correct my sleeping posture, I spoke with Dr. Andrea Matsumura, MD, a board-certified internal medicine and sleep medicine physician, who shared important information about how our bodies work while we sleep, why we may find ourselves in uncomfortable positions, and how to correct your sleeping position for a better night’s sleep.
What is the best position to sleep?
There is no “right” way to sleep, but there is a position that is best for rest and overall health. “You want to sleep optimally on your back,” says Dr. Matsumura. “You can sleep on your side, but sometimes people will need a pillow between their knees to sleep. But ideally you want to sleep on your back.”
Sleeping on your back keeps your spine aligned, which is essential for waking up without aches or pains. “The question is, if you have a hard mattress, you want a softer pillow to get the spine aligned. If you have a hard pillow, you want a softer mattress. Whatever it takes to align your spine.”
You may have heard that sleeping on your stomach is bad for your health, but Dr. Masumura says it really depends on the mattress and pillow you use. “Some data shows that if you sleep on your stomach, it can put pressure on your spine. But that’s not always true if you have a very soft pillow and your spine is aligned,” she says. “If you sleep on your stomach and your back hurts, okay, that’s a wake-up call to say, don’t sleep on your stomach, sleep on your back.”
What are the signs that my sleeping position is bad for me?
Pain such as back pain and neck tension indicate that you are not sleeping in the correct position. Distorted positions can lead to numbness. “In positions where our hands may be curled up or you’re sleeping on a limb, you might wake up and it’s numb because you’re compressing it,” says Dr. Matsumura. There’s no need to panic or worry, though: “It doesn’t mean you’re going to cause damage. It just means the nerve is compressed,” she says. “And then you have to wake up and move it and wake that nerve up again. And sometimes people can feel some numbness and tingling for a while, but that doesn’t mean you’re causing yourself nerve damage.”
How to correct your sleeping posture
Start with self-talk
