share. learn. thrive!

Sleep It Off: [your nasty stomach-sleeping habit, that is]

One of the things I always emphasize with my patients is the importance of sleeping on your back. And, for some reason, I always get massive resistance to it:

"But Dr. Stephanie...sleeping on my side is so comfortable!"

"Well, I usually start off on my back, but wake up on my front"

or my all-time favorite:

"Look here Dr. Stephanie, I'm Italian. I will never stop drinking espresso, and you can't make me sleep on my back. It's in my blood!"

Italian or not, sleeping on your back has many health and beauty benefits. Sleeping on your stomach is quite possibly the worst thing you can do for your spine, and pretty much guarantees a visit to my office - for pain [not for a wellness tune-up which is how I would prefer to see you. But I digress]. It will also dull the gorgeous glow on your face and give you wrinkles. There, I said it. Stomach sleeping give you wrinkles, jowels and basically makes you ugly.

Let's discuss.

Heath Benefits of Back Sleeping

1. Gorgeous Curves Maintained

Everyone loves curves. Even your spinal ones. Back sleeping is the most natural, and most supportive way to sleep. Period.

The 3 curves (yes all 3!) in in your spine will naturally gravitate towards their happy place where the beautiful curves are accentuated and supported. They are not flattened or, worse, inverted in any way.

2. Wake-Up Refreshed

When your spine is twisted and inverted like a pretzel all night, guess what happens. Your spinal cord (the nerves for your entire body that the spine protects) get irritated and annoyed with you. We are talking intoxicated-ex-girlfriend-that-just-saw-you-with-your-new-gf kind of irritated.

Waking up with achy joints, kinks, and muscle spasms are all not-so-fun things that can happen when your nervous system is irked at you.

3. Healthy Discs

Sleeping on your back, allows your discs to swell up with water (super important for their nutrition, and health), and lets them get their beauty rest in a low pressure environment. Discs don't deal well with high pressure situations and they can wreck havoc on your body when they do.

Your discs are kind of like that slippery, flaky friend who always seems to get out of an event she doesnt feel like going to. You know the one I am talking about. She wiggles, squirms, avoids, and somehow always manages to avoid high pressure situations. While you end up going to your twice removed cousin's baby shower for an entire Sunday afternoon and she gets to sleep in and watch 30 rock re-runs in her PJ's.

Your discs do just that...they avoid high pressure situations. The only difference between them and your friend is they help absorb shock in the spine in addition to the squirming about.

Every once in a while, your squirmy discs do get caught in high pressure situtations and are forced to deal with it. They usually react by freaking on your nerves, joints, and muscles, and causes everything to seize up. Anyone who has ever had a "pinched nerve" or a disc herniation knows how pleasant this can be.

--

So, now you know why sleeping on your back is so important for your overall health. In fact, besides seeing a good chiropractor [that would be me] regularly, it is the best thing you can do to prevent back issues.

However, you must know there are serious drawbacks to stomach sleeping. Let's chat us up some skin care.

Why Stomach-Sleeping Will Make You Ugly:

It may sound crude, but you (and your wrinkle-less face and healthy neck) will thank me later :

1. Unnecessary Wrinkles!

Notice when you wake up from your stomach you have those lines on your cheeks and face? Maybe when you were 18 they disappeared instantly. Now? Not so much. They take a bit longer to disappear these days, don't they? This is because you are single-handedly destroying the collagen and elastin fibres in your face.

Over time, the pressure on your cheek (from the weight of your noggin) will cause disruption in the collagen and elastin fibres in your face. Think about it. 8 hours of applied pressure to delicate face tissue. And when they break down, wrinkles are imminent. Trust.

I mean, obviously, you can come in for a cosmetic acupuncture treatment, as this treatment certainly helps. But why not help yourself and prevent it from happening in the first place?

2. Jowels

So, while you are sleeping on your stomach, your cheek is all bunched up on the bed, and you are likely drooling. You are also simultaneously stretching out your skin. The skin in your neck and lower jaw (jowel) area is being pulled, and you will, over time, pull the skin on one side of your face more than the other...resulting in a lopsided stretchng of the skin.

Totally and completely avoidable, by sleeping on your back!

3. Head & Neck Crank

This one is also completely [completely] avoidable.

In order for you to sleep on your stomach, you need to crank your head to one side so you can breathe. So, if you can imagine your delicate neck for one moment:

The joints and muscles on one side are going to be crushed, cramped, and compressed..for what 7 hours? You are smartiepants enough to know this is going to cause massive compression on one side of the neck (all all its joints, and muscles) and unnecessarily stretch out the opposite side.

Think about what happens after days, weeks or months of doing this. You will cause a yuge imbalance in symmetry in your neck: one side with be crushed and compressed, the other will be over-stretched.

Not to mention the pressure it places on your ribs, jaw, low back, and organs!!

--
So...enough with your stomach sleeping habit already!!!

Tags: neck, pain, posture, shoulder, sleeping

Next Post >

Comment

You need to be a member of Vega Community to add comments!

Join Vega Community

Comment by Bridget Franklin on November 10, 2011 at 6:52pm: good article on posture, sleeping habits

Comment by Jeri Taira on April 2, 2010 at 3:17pm: I'm glad you mentioned being pregnant and sleeping on your side. That's how I got into the bad habit of sleeping on my side. My husband and I are both working on sleeping on our backs. Next thing you know we find ourselves on our sides when we wake up...of course, with the neck and shoulder pain or tightness. Aaaaah.

Comment by linda hope on March 25, 2010 at 4:07pm: I actually like sleeping on my back, but have had to train myself into a side sleeper. If only I could keep my head in the neutral position, but I find it rolls to the side and I wake up with a terrible kink in my neck which will often result in a headache, so for me, although I agree with everything you are saying, it just doesn't work.

Comment by dr | stephanie on March 25, 2010 at 1:35pm: As for the tips on starting [and staying] on your back, this is the topic of my next blog post...but I will give you a little preview :)

First, it is important to determine WHY you are sleeping on your stomach on side. Does it feel more safe or secure to sleep that way?

Second, there are some techniques we can use to start breaking the side and stomach sleeping. There are specialized pillows that can help with this, along with the placement of pillows around your body at night.

Third - you can also make back sleeping more comfortable! Opening up the hips [say, for example, by doing 'tree pose' while lying down], ensuring you have the right kind of mattress [and box-spring], and cervical support are all super important. Your head position is important too-you dont want to be tilted so far back that you start snoring.

We all want to be comfortable above all else, and wake up refreshed...stay tuned for my next post!
And thank you again for all your comments. :)

Comment by dr | stephanie on March 25, 2010 at 11:47am: Ok so the problem with side sleeping [assuming you are not pregnant] is this:

When you are one the one side, you are sleeping on your shoulder blade, and your shoulder is forward. This is problematic because this is what 90% of us do all day long: sit at a desk, and hunch our shoulders forward.

It causes a chain reaction in our upper bodies: the chest muscles get shorter, the back muscle on the side you are sleeping on gets over stretched [and therefore asymmetrically weak], and you end up accentuating the hunched over posture chiropractors work so hard to get rid of!

Side-sleeping eventually accentuates the bad postural habits we develop in every day life, making them that much harder to break.

Comment by dr | stephanie on March 25, 2010 at 10:54am: Caroline - you bring up a good point [and are correct]- after a certain point in pregnancy, it is no longer recommended to sleep on your back. The size of the baby will start to compress the abdominal aorta - not good [for you or baby!] So during pregnancy, (usually in the 2nd trimester through to birth) sleeping on your side is perfectly acceptable, and quite frankly the only position you can get into. I often have patients purchase body pillows. This helps not only in terms of comfort [and something to snuggle up to] but it helps support the pelvic and hip alignment.

Comment by dr | stephanie on March 25, 2010 at 10:50am: Wow guys I am so happy to read all of these comments! I am going to try and answer them one by one...

Comment by MNAE on March 24, 2010 at 12:58pm: Thanks for reminding me about proper sleeping position. Overtime I've moved over to my side from my back, so now I am trying to train myself back. But, from a young age I have always been told to sleep on my side when sick or having breathing trouble, is there any truth in this?

Comment by Dave Shishkoff on March 23, 2010 at 6:35pm: Curious why sleeping on your side is so bad..? I think i end up rolling a fair bit, one side or the other, and on my back..

Comment by Sarah V on March 23, 2010 at 5:08am: I've been suffering with a bad back recently so been trying to sleep on my back instead of my front.
I can fall alseep on my back but wake up on my front so it's knowing how to stop yourself rolling over in the night.