Waking up in pain

If you regularly wake up in the morning with pain that wasn't there the night before, then there is a good chance that the culprit is the position in which you sleep.

We've all seen mattress advertisements extolling the virtues of specific sleep surfaces, but only a few of these sources address the correct posture for sleeping. If a health care professional has talked to you about your sleep posture, they've probably focused on the sound advice: "Don't sleep on your stomach!"

Sleeping on your stomach can irritate your neck and back due to the sustained rotation of the neck to one side while sleeping in this position. If you use a pillow while sleeping on your stomach, then you are also pushing the neck into a rotated and backward extended position. In either case, you are twisting your cervical spine, you are stretching all of the neck muscles on one side of your body, and you have shortened all of the neck muscles on the other side of your body. Hold this position for several hours each night and you've a good a great long term recipe for pain.

The pain that you experience may be due to the pinching of a nerve by a vertebrae, but it can also be caused by over-stretched and chronically shortened muscles.

Good posture is not just about the position of your spine;
good posture is also about the position of your muscles.

To avoid pain, avoid sleeping positions that overly lengthen and shorten your muscles. This rule applies whether you sleep on your stomach, your back, or your side. The important factor is to encourage a neutral posture; one where most of your muscles can assume their natural resting lengths.

If you sleep on your side, avoid the fetal position.

The fetal position is the human body's position of maximum flexion. When sleeping in the fetal position, most of your flexor muscles are shortened, and most of your extensor muscles are streched. Your spine is fairly happy, but your muscles aren't and they will probably tell you about it the next morning.

Sit up straight, stand up straight, and sleep straight. Easier said than done, but good advice none-the-less.