Hi, Dr. Steph here, your chiropractor for low back pain Sun Prairie WI.
And what we’re doing today is actually going through one of the most common questions that we have here in our office, which is what is the best way to sleep.
So, especially for low back pain, it’s important to keep your spine in a neutral position and the best way to do that is by sleeping on your back.
Best Sleeping Position for Low Back Pain
So, Dr. Jonathan’s going to be my sleeping model here and he’s going to lay down.
So, pretty self-explanatory, making sure that your legs are straight, back is hopefully pushed out to the floor, you don’t have too much of an arch in it.
If this is uncomfortable, because for some people it is, there’s a couple things you can do. You could take a pillow, so either a bed pillow like this or even like a flatter couch pillow will work as well, and you can just go ahead and put it right underneath the small of your low back if you’re feeling like you need a little bit of extra support there.
So, that’s option one.
Option two is instead of the pillow under the small of your back, you’re gonna put it down here
right underneath your knees to take some of the pressure off your knees there. So, the number one best sleeping position is right here in neutral on your back.
Second Sleeping Position for Low Back Pain
The next best position, if that’s not comfortable for you or if you just can’t fall asleep like that,
because I know that I can’t, is the sideline position.
So again, my model’s gonna scoot over to his side. Perfect.
So we do have a chiropractic pillow here to make sure his neck is supported. And again, even though he’s on his side, he still is supposed to have his spine in a neutral position.
So what that means in the sideline position is the neck is still straight in line with the rest of the spine. And one of the, again, most common things that we see in our office is people coming in
with complaints of low back pain, sometimes even going down into the hip.
A lot of times what they’re doing is they’re sleeping on their side, but instead of stacking their knees together just like he has here, they actually kick this leg forward and then their hips are into rotation for seven, eight, however many hours of sleep you get a night.
So then, when you go back to standing up or walking around, you can feel pain all the way down into your low back and into your butt and to your hips.
So if that’s you, just try a really quick fix of making sure that your knees are stacked on top of each other.
If that’s difficult for you, again, you can bring out your pillow, put it right between your knees there, and then there’s less rubbing and it does kinda help as a mental reminder to make sure that you’re not rotating far with your hips.
All right, there it is. Two of the best sleeping positions for low back pain.
