Hi, folks i'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist
Brad Heineck physical therapist. Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet, in our opinion of course
How to improve your health with the right sleeping position, right or wrong sleeping posture, we're gonna go over five
common sleeping positions and we're gonna tell you what's good about them and what's bad about them. I think these are the five basic
positions the average person uses
By far and we're gonna go through each one individually. Unless you're a horse! and he sleeps standing up
Well actually i saw a horse yesterday, I was out running and it was laying flat on its ground it looked like it could
Have been dead but i think horses lay flat on their side. I thought they stand
They do both, I don't know. Maybe someone can comment, or a bat we could sleep upside down
Yeah, let's get started here right Brad. Oh, by the way let's do this,
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wasn't that true though. I had a couple of friends, anyways let's get on with it. All right first position brad
Fetal position, let's demonstrate. So you're curled up like this
Oh, and you probably have a pillow, most people are, just like I was in the womb, yep so that's why
it is a fetal position because this is where you were as a fetus
I personally do this on a cold winter night when the sheets are, still cold and i get in and
then once I warm up, then i go into the more preferred position, once you get into it a little bit
We talk about why
This position is not desirable - well one thing
You're in a real flexed position all night long.
We're trying to teach you to keep your back
as straight as possible throughout the day. So your back is rounded out like this all night long now
That's not necessarily a lot of stress on the back because you don't have weight on it, but it's, still kind of creating a
reliance on a certain position and it's gonna reinforce that position
Plus sideline in general does put a little skew on the back and a lateral position, so we're going sideways
A little ways out of neutral as well as in a flexed so you got two different
Not abnormal but positions that to lay for a long period of time you probably
don't want that. I want to bring up another point about
circulation and breathing
If you've got all these tight turns, you got a tight turn here, and the hips, a tight turn here in the knee
Your shoulders and your elbows are all crunched up
the blood circulation
It's like if you take a
Garden hose and you bend the garden hose you crimp it, and you don't have the
blood flow, or in a garden hose the water flow
actually stops or reduces. It doesn't stop it here but it reduces the free flow of
circulation throughout
your arteries. So yeah especially lymphatic too - the lymphatic system, so if you're having swelling in the legs
The swelling has to go up into your abdomen area in order to get processed and then you pee it out
basically, but if you're
Like this and your crimping the hose in a couple of spots it's
gonna be harder for that fluid to come out of the layers, so the big-picture:
Circulation whether it's in the arteries or the veins or the lymphatic
system, we're crimping that off and we don't want to do that
We're gonna avoid that. We'll show
you some right ways to do things later. You wanna do that first or the bad things first?
Well i'm going right to supine
All right so supine, means on your back
and supine
i'm gonna, say right off the bat is
Probably if not for sure the most desirable position as far as keeping
Your body healthy circulation, breathing wise, spine, keeping your spine in a good neutral position, which we like.
The biggest thing about laying on your back that will be a common mistake is if
this happens
You have too thick of a pillow, and i'm gonna put two under here or you use two pillows
Which a lot of people do
Two pillows or one big one. Look how flexed i am. So we've got this spine is nice and neutral throughout his torso and low back
but then the neck is tilted up. People will do this so they can watch tv sometimes
And then if you fall asleep
Like that, it gets your spine in that cranked position
And it's not desirable
It may not cause a problem in one night but over a period of weeks or months is where you can, develop
Some problems. And that's gonna affect your breathing too. You're closing off your trachea here
Again, are we making suggestions that one might do to make
supine better? Sure yep I mean one thing I see a lot of people who have back pain
And they don't like to be this extended all night long, so they do better with pillows underneath their legs
Or of course
the leg wedge, Brad's coming back with that so
You could put pillows or even more preferably most people find this to be superior
comfort. Whenever you put this in I just
It's just like ahh yeah this is really nice and they're
inexpensive. I wish they were a little bit longer, for someone who's over six foot tall it would be nice
Maybe we'll have to make this recommendation to the
manufacturers. I'd like to see this, where are my feet are just, that would be perfect, but, now it's not getting me
That support there, and that support there is what feels really good. Really does something for the hips and the back
A lot of my back pain patients really can't sleep
like this. It just puts too much i think the sets are coming together
And it's hurting much. I'll say this Bob. If you feel more comfortable laying on your back with
your knees up than being flat
Chances are very likely you're, gonna feel very comfortable with, that
okay
Next should we attack the side lying position, Bob? Okay number three let's go right side lying position or
Okay, so right side lying the thing about this that a lot of people aren't aware of and is it may cause heartburn
Just because of the way the stomach is in the body. Yeah i have read that too i found that interesting.
Actually, there's some negative things to be on the right side versus the left side. The other things that we've mentioned
if you're on your back actually,
More likely to snore if you're laying on your back
Sometimes that's a problem, it depends on who else is in the room
But going to the right side, we want to make sure the pillow is right, so if it's a thin pillow
I felt uncomfortable already Brad, I mean, and i use two pillows
I just fold mine up, I hope I do that when i'm sleeping
But, we want to keep that spine in a neutral position and you know if it's too high
We get this and if it's too low.
That's how I felt it already and I really didn't like this, that's already uncomfortable
Side lying make sure that you don't bring your knees up to too close and get into that
fetal position. The wall between the legs is nice, some people if you got a hip
problem, sometimes this will really make a difference and then of course
Sometimes they even put a rolled towel underneath here don't they Brad
Especially if your back is kind of sagging, you can take a towel and
Roll it up, and put duct tape on it like
we did and it fills in that little gap here, that actually does feel good,
I just had a person last week with a herniated disc and
This was very helpful for her and actually laying on her back was helpful yeah and you can take it to the point
Where you put it all the way around you and it's giving
you support all the time, right as opposed to just when you're on your side, it'll give you a support
when you're on your back too. You can make your own like this or if you look up sleep roll
Mckenzie makes a sleep roll. I gotta put it in our Amazon list, below. Okay our favorite
products below. If you go down in the description it's in there so i just put that on there, oh?
Perfect, yeah let's go to the left sidelying
Okay, so if you can imagine if laying on your right
may cause heartburn, if you lay on your left it decreases your risk for for heartburn
So that's a nice thing as far as that digestive system goes. The same thing holds true, neck position, make
sure the pillow, we'll double it this time for Bob
Okay you can put the sleep roll between there so, we put this between your knees
The roll would go underneath here again
It's good for, well I saw some stuff on that it's going to increase lymph drainage
On your left side better than your right. I didn't find anything real scientific. I communicated with Aaron, our
resident expert on lymph drainage, and from his training he said, yeah it might be true but
There's nothing real solid on it, but one way or another it's not gonna bother it as
What i could find out, but decreases acid reflux. Yep the GERD, the problem with heartburn
coming up the
esophagus. So next thing. This is the fun one to go after Bob
Prone, laying on the stomach: is it good? bad? Who knows. We're gonna go over that.
So lay it on your stomach
We as therapists as far as what it does to the spine particularly in the neck, we don't
advise it. We know some people do it and they're very comfortable with it and maybe their anatomy
tolerates it well, but over time they may end up that they're, going to have problems with, their neck because
Bob's neck, is all the way to the left right now
We call that end range of where all the the neck joints, the facet joints, in there and that can
Cause problems and it can eventually cause problems if you get some impingement on one of the spinal nerves
And get part pain in the shoulder and the arm
Headaches. Bob went to a continuing ed course, where it's pretty clear that that can contribute to some headaches
Also the low back, arches that low back a little bit and that can
cause problems for long term. Another thing is shoulders. If you tend to sleep with
your arms up like that, you can increase the likelihood of less blood flow
to the tendons, little more impingement issues going on. Thoracic outlet syndrome
I'll lay on my stomach for like 10 minutes just in the middle of night
Get back on your back, so what do you say?
Bob that's all five, I think it's pretty straightforward, so you know if you can
lay on your back, it's probably the best, but work the other ones as you can. Sounds good. Thanks everybody for watching.