Best (and Worst) Sleeping Positions for Neck Pain | Dr. John Brockway Chiropractor in Denver

Denver, CO

A good night’s sleep is vital to not only feel better, but to heal better. But that’s not always possible, especially if you’re dealing with neck pain. So in this video I’m going to be covering the ideal sleeping positions for dealing with neck pain, as well as the best pillow arrangement and adopting some postural habits that are really going to help you out with dealing with neck pain so you’re able to get a great night’s sleep with less neck pain. Hi, I’m Dr. John Brockway. I’m a chiropractor in Glendale, Colorado. It’s a small suburb located in Denver, Colorado, and what this channel is about is helping you to stretch, strengthen, and stabilize your body so you can move without pain and get back to life again. So let’s get right into it. I’m going to show you exactly what we’re dealing with here. 

First, we’re going to cover a little bit of anatomy. So looking at the neck from the side, this is like we’re looking in this direction. There should be a nice curve in our neck just like this. If we’re lying on our side, our spine should be nice and straight just like this. So let’s go over some of those sleeping positions that you may find yourself in. First one is going to be sleeping on your stomach, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you and I both know this is not a great situation as far as sleeping goes, and let me show you why. So firstly, when we’re lying on our stomach, we’re going to have to turn our head in order to breathe as we turn our head. This causes quite a bit of stress and tension into the neck muscles. Not only that, but also into the joints as well as the nerve root.

So it’s not great for our neck. In addition to that, what’s happening is our lower back is getting too much of a curvature and it can cause lower back issues as well. So try to find yourself in a different sleeping situation if you can. The next position that I see and hear about is patients will sleep upright. This might be in a recliner, that sort of thing. Here’s the things that aren’t great about that particular situation. When we’re in a recliner or we’re sleeping upright, normally the discs are able to decompress due to we’re not dealing with gravity. Whenever we’re in a recliner, those discs are still being compressed, so we have that compressive load and they aren’t able to decompress or relax in the middle of the night. Now, in addition to that, when we’re in a recliner, we tend to not have the best support for our neck either.

So the neck can also be compromised. So again, not an ideal situation. The first acceptable sleeping position is going to be sleeping on your side and let me show you why this is a really good idea. Sleeping on our side. Firstly, we keep that spine nice and straight, especially if we have a properly supportive pillow. In addition to that, we’re going to get that decompressive element all throughout the spine. So it’s going to keep the spine nice and happy. Now again, we want to have a properly supportive pillow. If we don’t, let’s say that we’re sleeping on an overly supportive pillow, maybe like a couple pillows, what ends up happening is our neck is doing this all night. If it’s under supportive, our neck is doing this all night. And again, that’s not a great situation either. So a properly supportive pillow is going to be vital for sleeping on our side.

Now the last and my favorite sleeping position is going to be lying on your back. And here’s why that is such a great way to sleep. So we’re going to have that decompressive element associated with lying on our back. We’re also going to get that same effect into the neck. And if we have a properly supportive pillow, we’re going to maintain that nice curvature into our neck as we sleep. Again, if we’re sleeping on an overly supportive pillow, our neck is going to be doing this all night and an under supportive pillow that’s going to be doing this all night. So in an ideal world, we’re going to have that properly supportive pillow right underneath our neck as we’re sleeping on our back. That’s the absolute best position you can find yourself in. Now I realize that not everyone is going to be able to maintain that same position throughout the night.

This is why you should simply start in one of these ideal sleeping positions, whether that’s on your side or on your back. If in the middle of the night you find yourself on one of these other positions, then simply switch back to either sleeping on your back or on your side. Now even the best sleeping position in the world is going to require the support of a properly supportive pillow. So a lot of patients ask me, Hey, what is the best pillow that you recommend? Now I realize that that’s going to be a different answer for everyone. My particular favorite is going to be a product called the D-core from Core Products. Here’s why I like this one so much. If you sleep on your side, they recommend you sleep on your side here. If you sleep on your back, they recommend you sleep right here. Honestly, in the middle of the night, your body’s not going to care what position you find yourself in on this.

No matter if you sleep on your back or on your side, your body’s going to find the natural sleeping position that’s going to work ideally for you. So that’s my favorite. Now the other thing of note about this particular pillow is that they make it in a kid size. For the kids that are in our life, as far as firmness goes, I recommend the firm option over the extra firm option. Also, keep in mind that it takes some time to get used to this. This is new. This is like a new pair of shoes, a new bed. It’s going to take some time for you to break it in and get used to it. So start off on this. If in the middle of the night you are uncomfortable, then find yourself going back to your old pillow. That’s totally fine. Within a short amount of time, this is gonna be your newfound favorite pillow.

Now, even the best sleeping position in the world combined with the best pillow is going to require some good postural habits on your end. Or it might be for naught. So what does this look like right before bed? A lot of times patients are finding themselves looking for some form of entertainment. This is going to be texting, looking at a device, reading, maybe watching tv. And usually what this looks like is we have a couple pillows propped up behind our neck and we’re in this situation for a good amount of time, and that’s really not great, especially right before we go to bed. So in an ideal world, instead what we’re going to do is we’re going to have our feet flat on the bed. We’re going to have our knees bent and we’re going to have our back supported by a pillow right behind our back and our neck is going to be right over our shoulders. If we’re reading, we can rest our hands right on our knees and we can read, we can be doing device work. If we’re watching a show, we can do that as well. And our neck is not going to be nearly as cranky as it would have if we would’ve adopted that bad habit. I hope you found this video helpful. If you have any questions about neck pain or you’re interested in finding out more about hidden causes of neck pain, be sure to check out our video up here. Be sure to like, share and subscribe so you don’t miss out on more great content just like this.