5 Easy Tips to Lessen Back Pain at Night
Back pain doesn’t care about your age. While you’re less likely to have sleeping issues if you’re younger, that doesn’t mean you’re free from this lifelong scourge. If you’ve got a bad mattress, if you aren’t in good shape, if you sleep in odd positions, if you injure yourself, or the room isn’t comfortable, you may find you’re dealing with back pain at night.
Here we’ll briefly explore five tips you can look into as a means of helping you both relieve and avoid back pain going forward. Hopefully at least a few of the suggestions explored here will be of use to you.
1 A Pillow Between Your Legs
Sometimes the issue is the weight of your legs on your pelvis. A lot of side sleepers have a left or right leg toward the air. If you’re leaning on your right side, your left leg is pointing at the sky, and if you weigh 200 pounds, that leg is probably around fifty pounds.
Gravity is pulling it against your other leg, and that’s smashing into your pelvis, ‘twisting’ your spine. This is a recipe for pain!
A simple fix is putting a pillow between your legs when you curl up at night to lessen the pressure on your pelvis, reduce twisting and turning, and subsequently align your spine. Here’s a link with a more in-depth look at the science.
2 Stretching
Most people don’t stretch before they go to bed; they just lay down and let sleep spirit them away. Similarly, a lot of people don’t stretch enough after they wake up. Though morning stretches are more common, a lot of people still don’t do them. Also, you should dedicatedly stretch during the day as well.
Proper daily stretches reduce back pain by toughening up muscles surrounding the spine. Sometimes back issues have to do with weak muscles that can’t provide proper support. Stretching keeps everything “loose” and “flexible”.
3 Changing Mattresses
If you’re stretching and sleeping with a pillow between your legs already, the issue likely has to do with your mattress. Some mattresses are too hard, others are too soft, and you’re looking for the “goldilocks” zone. Simply switching your mattress can mean a new world of rest and comfort.
There are quite a few mattresses to choose from that are specifically designed to provide back support to sleepers in need. What works for you may not work for another person who has a similar problem, so do your homework. Follow this link to find more info.
4 Avoiding Heartburn Foods
If you wake up at three in the morning with an esophageal burn, that usually means you’ve eaten something that influences the digestive juices in your stomach, backing them up into your throat. Heartburn has nothing to do with your heart, but—pun-intended—it can be disheartening.
As a general rule of thumb, don’t eat anything after 5:00 PM so you give your body proper time to digest before you drift off to bed between 8:00 and midnight. If you know which foods specifically cause you heartburn (nachos, pizza, salsa, and marinara sauce come to mind), then just avoid those foods before bed.
When you wake up with heartburn, you usually drift to a vertical position so the acid backed up in your esophagus doesn’t come bubbling out your mouth. Your head is pitched forward, pulling on the musculature and skeletal structure in your back. In the morning, you may still feel back pain. Avoiding heartburn foods before you sleep sidesteps this issue.
5 Exercise More
Just as stretches help hone your physicality, so also does exercise. When muscles are stronger, they “cradle” your skeletal structure more securely, and you have more flexibility as necessary. Accordingly, you’re able to avoid back pain directly with regular exercise. Try to get thirty minutes a day six days a week, if possible. Here’s a link with more info.
Final Thoughts on freeing your back from pain
Exercise more often with the right exercises to reduce back pain. Try to avoid foods that give you heartburn. Change your mattress, that could be the issue. Before you go to bed, and after you wake up, stretch appropriately. Lastly, try sleeping with a pillow between your legs. Find what works, and go with that. Back pain at night is something you can overcome.
