Sleeping position: How should you sleep to avoid neck pain?

This post is for people wondering about the best position to sleep in, especially if they suffer from neck pain, upper back pain, neck tightness or forward head posture. 

How should you sleep to avoid neck pain?

We frequently get asked 'what the best position to sleep in?'.

Although this question has many answers depending on the specific needs of the person, we wanted to address what we see as one of the most common sources of issues for our clients, and that is to focus on head and neck position. 

The aim is to take the pressure off the structures supporting your head, as well as allowing your body to be as comfortable as possible throughout the night. 

We hope that you can get some insights from this short video to help your body work with you in your efforts to alleviate neck pain etc as well as improve your posture for the whole third of your life you are SUPPOSED to spend asleep.

As with all our videos, this one has been transcribed below.

Be sure to check back on this page next week when Martin explains how best to choose a pillow.

If you have further questions about making the most of your sleeping position, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us. 

Never underestimate the importance of good quality night of sleep!

Hi, it’s Martin and Kieran from Align Chiropractic and one of the most common questions that we get asked every day in practice is: “what position should I be sleeping in?” 

What I want to go over today is (in our opinion) the two best positions that we want to be in when we're asleep, and it's really very similar to what we're looking for when we're looking at your posture when you are standing up. 

What should your sleeping posture look like?

If we have a look at Kieran’s posture, what we're really looking for when we look at somebody’s posture from the front is when we look at head posture, does the head line up coming in the middle of their chest we don't want to see posture that's tipped over this way or twist it around or whatever. 

When we translate that to sleeping position, we’re trying to set up a sleeping pose so that our posture is in that ‘ideal’ position. 

Kieran, if you can turn side on, we want to see the same thing, because our bodies are in three dimensions we’re also looking to make sure that our posture is lined up from the side so that this big weight about our head is balanced over the big weight of our chest so we're looking for our ear over our shoulder to balance up, so again if we translate standing posture to lying down posture, that’s what we're looking for there. 

Sleeping on your back

So, what I’ll get you to do now Kieran, if you can lie down on your back for me and if we look at posture from the side here, we've got the right position here, lying on our back we've got a pillow set up properly.

What we're really looking for is that same thing where we've got that ear kind of balancing up over the shoulder. 

What about side sleepers?

Now if we can now turn into our side posture, what we're really looking for here again is, if we're looking at the middle of the face we're wanting that to be almost a straight line. 

We don't want it this pillow was too low, then it would allow his head to tip… well that's way over to the side but similarly if we had a higher, pillow it's going to lift that up too high. 

So we're looking for a straight line there, we want that lining up, kind of at the middle of the chest so that again, we’re keeping that perfect posture while we’re spending the seven and a half to eight hours in this position while we're in bed this way. 

I hope that video is useful gives you a bit of an idea that the two best positions for you to sleep in are either on your back or on your side, because it's really important to make sure that your spinal posture is in a great position while you're asleep.

Simple exercises for people with neck pain

If you have neck pain, tight shoulders or headaches that come from your neck then I suggest you watch the video below.  

In the video I run you though some very simple movement exercises to keep you mobile, try and get your neck moving again and hopefully help make you more comfortable as you go through your day. 

I have tried to keep them very quick and easy so that you can incorporate them into your day simply and without having to make it too obvious that you're doing them.

If you are concerned about your neck pain or you have any questions, or if you experience discomfort doing them, then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us. 

As always, the video has been transcribed below, but I recommend you watch to get a demonstration...and to see me in my solo video debut. Enjoy. 

Hi I'm Kieran from Align Chiropractic. I just wanted to run you through a quick exercise for getting your neck moving.

Now if you're somebody that suffers from neck pain, a tight neck or headaches that feel like they come from your neck then this video is for you. 

One of the main group of exercises that we recommend for our clients regularly are to get their neck moving again. 

It's really important that your neck range of motion is even to both sides, it should be pain free and it shouldn't feel too tight one side compared to the other. 

The important thing to remember when doing these exercises is don't push through a pain barrier or push to the extremes of your motion. 

What we are wanting to do is get to the point of restriction and just relax into that position. 

So its very simple to do; first of all we're looking at rotation. 

Turning your head to one side holding it at that point of restriction for three seconds come back to the middle then turning the other side. 

You're looking for it to be even on both sides and pain-free, hold for three seconds, back to the middle. 

Next we go straight to side, lateral flexion for three seconds, back to the middle and then to the right-hand side for three seconds and finally, back to the middle again.

Remember, it’s three seconds on each side and you cycle through all four of those five positions 5 times to keep things moving.

If you are finding a lot of restriction or are particularly uncomfortable on one side more than the other, that can be an indication of a more significant underlying imbalance.

If you are feeling that or have any concerns about how your body is moving,  I'd recommend that you get on to us and let's figure out what's happening for you.

Neck Pain

Neck pain is a common condition that most of us will suffer from at some point in our lives. 

It can arise for a whole host of reasons but if you have ever suffered from neck pain, you know that even mild neck pain can feel like  it is taking over your life! It can make it harder for you to sleep, work, exercise and enjoy time with your friends and family.

The most common causes of neck pain  are day to day movements and postural stresses and  neck pain is rarely the sign of a more serious condition.

In case you aren't sure where neck pain is, here is a stock photo to indicate what a pain in the neck neck pain is. In this instance, pain is indicated by redness.

Neck pain can often refer to areas such as your shoulders, arms and upper back, as well as being a cause of headaches.  

Common causes of neck pain include:

•         Poor posture (the way your body is positioned when standing or sitting)
•         Sleeping in an awkward position.
•         Upper back and neck muscle tension.
•         Injury such as a muscle strain.
•         Whiplash. 
•         Prolonged sitting, especially when using a desktop or laptop computer.
•         Arthritis.
•         Degenerative changes in bones of the neck as a part of the ageing process or previous injury.

You will notice a common theme to the list above and that is; all of them appear relatively trivial when compared to the impact that neck pain has on our lives.

In fact, for a lot of our clients suffering from neck pain, that adds to the frustration. It doesn't matter if the pain is mild or severe, recent or decades old, most frequently, our clients will say that it just doesn't add up. “Why they are in so much discomfort? Why won’t the pain just go away by itself? Why does it keep coming back?”

How can something so mundane cause so much pain?

In these situations it is highly likely that there is an underlying imbalance of function that meant that their body was ‘on edge’. There was a build up of tension in an area of their spine and that mundane event was just the straw that broke the camels back (for the want of a better term).

Does it make sense to you that if your spine is functioning well that a trivial stress would be enough to make your neck hurt? If your range of motion was symmetrical, your muscles, ligaments and tendons were relaxed, elastic and strong  does it make sense that it would suddenly start to hurt you? 

Of course it doesn’t. 

An underlying imbalance of function is most likely why you notice neck pain that comes out of no where, or won’t calm down, or keeps coming back. 

This is why our initial assessment of someone with neck pain looks for two things:

1. What is the cause pain and how do we get it to calm down as quickly as possible? 
2. Is there an underlying imbalance and if so, what can you do to address it to minimise the chances of it coming back?

There are also more serious causes of neck pain that, although much more rare, we need to screen for. 

The more serious causes of neck pain are issues like fracture, disc prolapse compressing on nerves, cancer or meningitis.

We have designed our assessment to be able to determine if your neck pain arises from an issue that we can start to address immediately, requires referring for further testing (such as X-rays or MRI etc.) or if you require immediate referral for medical assessment. 

So how do I know if I need to see you or go to the Emergency Department?

If you are experiencing intense neck pain after a severe head or neck injury, have lost vision due to an accident, are having difficulty swallowing, have lost or severely altered bowel and/or bladder function or your neck pain is linked to intense fever, we advise that you visit your ED as soon as is possible to make sure that you aren’t suffering from more serious conditions. 

If you have any questions or concerns about neck pain, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us at Align.

4 Steps to Assess people with Headaches

If you or someone you know suffers from headaches than this post is for you. 

Below is a video Martin and I made about the steps we take when assessing a client who visits us at Align suffering from headaches. 

There are many different types of headache and not all of them respond to chiropractic care. This is why we go through our 4 step process to determine 

1. What type of headache you are suffering from,
2. Are you in the right place and we the right people to help you,
3. What steps do you need to take to get on top of your headaches.

If you are concerned about your headaches or just sick of dealing with them, contact us at Align and lets find out how to get you on track. 

The video is 3 minutes but for those of you who prefer to read, there is a transcript below the clip. 

Hi, Martin here and Kieran from Align Chiropractic and this is a short video to let you know what to expect if you were to come and see us because you've got concerns about your headaches. 

Step One:

The first thing when you have headaches, is you want to make sure that you get the opportunity to tell us all about what's been happening with you. 

There are a lot of different types of headaches and so we're going to be asking you some really specific questions about the type of headache you have, where in your head you get it, the sort of things that make it better or worse and also the things that your headaches are making it harder for you to do in your life. 

This is because while headaches are one part of the problem for, a lot of people the most important thing is to be able to get back to doing the things that they either love to do or need to do in their life. 

So step one we're going to be asking some questions and giving you an opportunity to tell us all about your headaches. 

Step two

When we're assessing somebody who's come to see us with headaches, is to do a palpatory examination. 

A palpatory exam is where we use gentle touch, gentle pressure to assess areas where joints might be restricted in their motion or muscles might have tightened up or there might be areas where there's tenderness that can be part of the trigger for head pain. 

We will also often extend beyond that area, once we’ve got an assessment of the neck and upper back to other related areas so we might be feeling out through the shoulders, palpating the jaw or palpating down through the lower back and rest of the spine. 

Step Three

When we are assessing somebody who has come to see us for headaches is we look at how their spine bends and moves and twists. 

Often when there are imbalances or problems in the way the neck is working it will affect how far you can bend to the left compared to the right. the way that we assess that is to use a process called Inclinometry, which is where we use a precise instrument, called an inclinometer to measure exactly how far you go to the left compared to the right. 

So we can assess all the way, comfortable range of motion one way and then see if going the other way is more restricted. 

Step Four: 

When we are assessing somebody who has come to see us complaining of headaches, is we assess the alignment of their spine. 

Posture is the window that we can use to assess how their how well aligned their spine is and we use specialised software to take a digital photo of them from the front and the side we then digitise that to see if there's any significant alteration in their alignment. 

The way the software works is we first of all take a photo and it uses the iPad to make sure that we have a photo that is absolutely the software then places our grid around exactly where straight up and down is and then we can compare landmarks on you that should also be aligned to see exactly how straight up and down or symmetrical your posture is.