Tip #: The Right Way To Get Out Of Bed
Lastly, make sure you are getting out bed properly. Unfortunately, the majority of people will sit up, twist their back to prepare to get into a standing position, and use their back to stand. This method is incorrect.
The proper way to exit a bed upon waking is to roll onto your side and use your arm to push up from the side-lying position. From this position, scoot to the very edge of the bed and get up using your legs, not your back.
Sleeping shouldnt be painful. It should be a time to relax. Implementing these aforementioned suggestions is a great way to decrease pain while you sleep and increase your odds of having a great nights rest.
How Do You Know When Back Pain Is Serious
If back pain can be associated with a specific activity, such as lifting or twisting wrong, and the pain goes away within 72 hours after resting and applying ice, its usually nothing to worry about. However, if pain creeps on gradually, appears suddenly, or doesnt go away, you might have a more serious condition.
Symptoms That Require Immediate Attention
Sometimes low back pain can signal a serious underlying medical condition. People who experience any of the following symptoms are advised to seek immediate care.
- Loss of bladder and bowel control
- Recent weight loss not due to lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise
- Fever and chills
See When Back Pain May Be a Medical Emergency
Additionally, people who experience pain symptoms after a major trauma are advised to see a doctor. If low back pain interferes with daily activities, mobility, sleep, or if there are other troubling symptoms, medical attention should be sought.
Chronic low back pain is usually correlated with other symptoms. Most people with ongoing low back pain and/or leg pain report difficulty with sleeping , depression and anxiety.
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Specific Questions To Consider Instead
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Is my back better during the day from proper habits or is it the effect of medication? .
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Is it better during the day from proper exercise, or is it due to muscle fatigue and weakness masked as mobility?
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When you feel better, is it because the problem muscles and joints are more flexible and mobile, or are other muscle groups merely compensating?
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Is my problem from stiffness or tightness of my muscles, joints or both?
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Would I be able to pass basic strength, flexibility, endurance and stretching tests now as compared to before it hurt?
If you change your perspective from one of passive pain management applied only when youre sore, and instead, see this issue as one of active conditioning and protection, relief will be more achievable and likely.
Why Is My Back Pain Worse In The Morning
Morning back pain can cause stiffness, discomfort, reduced flexibility and mobility, and both sharp and dull pain. Sometimes these symptoms improve as the day goes on only to return the next morning. Why does this happen? Find out 4 reasons for your morning back pain in todays blog.
Louise Baillie
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Why Does Your Back Hurt In The Morning
Have you ever woken up in the morning and experienced back pain? You would be surprised how many people suffer from morning back pain. First you may consider you were sleeping incorrectly, but is that a case? What if the back pain occurs every morning? Is it something serious? Should you be worried?
Studies have shown up to 80% of Americans experiences lower back pain at least once throughout their lives. Its one of the most common reason people see their doctor. Find out what causes morning back and neck pain and how to prevent them. Dr. Hepler, our spine surgeon in Palm Beach County will explain reasons of back pain after sleeping and present several steps you can take to ensure you are sleeping correctly to prevent your neck and back from pain.
Here are the most common reasons why people experience lower back pain after sleeping.
Some Of The Most Common Issues That Contribute To Morning Back Pain Include:
This list outlines some of the most common reasons why you might be experiencing back pain in the morning.
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How To Pick A Good Mattress For Your Back
Every one has different sleep preferences, which can make it hard to find the perfect mattress. Look for one that is not too firm or too soft. If the mattress is too firm, it will push on your pressure points and cause misalignment. Similarly, if the bed is too soft, it will allow your body to sink into the bed causing bad posture while you sleep, which can then lead to pain. The right mattress should make you feel like you are floating on air.
Financial times might be tough at the moment, but one should consider in investing in a good mattress. Think about it, you should be spending 7-9 hours on your mattress each night, which makes it an important piece of furniture. You want to invest in something that will give you better sleep and less pain, instead of going frugal and buying a mattress that is not right for your body.
How Sleep Can Contribute To Back Pain
Although there are many potential sources of lower back pain, how youre sleeping can be a factor. When youre sleep-deprived, your tolerance for pain is lower than it would be if you slept well. Studies have shown that losing sleep can heighten sensitivity to painful stimuli. In theory, sleep loss increases painful inflammation and getting enough sleep may reduce inflammation.
Another factor that can increase back pain is your response to pain medication when youre sleep-deprived. In a study of healthy normal adults, the analgesic effects of codeine are diminished in sleep-deprived individuals versus non-sleepy individuals. Sleeping well may help your pain medications work better.
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Do You Suffer From Back Pain At Night
During the night, your body recovers from its daily activities: too much sitting, lifting heavy objects, sports, . That is, if you have a good bed with the right mattress and a special pillow. If you sleep on a badly supporting mattress, your back and neck will not relax enough. This causes muscle tension and disrupted sleep.
An inadequate mattress means disrupted sleep. And this can cause chronic back pain.
It is important that your pelvis, spinal column and neck are supported as much as possible when you sleep. If this is not the case, you do not get enough relaxation and it can even cause damage in and around the spinal column, which may cause even more chronic back pain.
Common Causes Of Chronic Lower Back Pain
“Chronic lower back pain is less likely to be caused by injury to your muscles and ligaments and more likely to be due to issues with the lumbar disks, nerves, joints or vertebrae,” says Dr. Palmer. “There are several potential causes of chronic pain in the lower back.”
In general, osteoarthritis and degenerative disk disease are the underlying cause of many types of chronic lower back pain. However, lower back pain can also be caused by accident-related trauma and acute stress.
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Changing Your Sleep Position
Simple adjustments to your posture can improve your level of comfort when you wake up and, in some cases, can relieve morning back pain completely. You can also try placing supportive pillows around your body to help keep your spine correctly aligned while you sleep:
- a pillow underneath your knees if you sleep on your back can align the spine better and reduce lower back pain
- a pillow between the legs of a side sleeper better aligns the hips and spine
- a pillow underneath the lower abdomen of a stomach sleeper can reduce the curvature in the lower back
Reasons Your Back Pain Is Worse When You Wake Up
1) Fluid in spinal discsSpinal fluid is necessary to allow for all of our spinal motions without it the spine would crack and break. The fluid is a shock absorber that circulates nutrients and chemicals filtered from the blood and removes waste products from the brain. Our spinal discs constantly fill and empty of this fluid. Our spinal discs are at their fullest in the morning because they fill up with fluid when we lie down at night. This means that when we get up in the morning we will be a little bit taller than usual, but also a little bit stiffer! This stiffness can cause morning back pain that will ease off as the day goes on. Practicing gentle back exercises such as cat/cow will help to get the spinal fluid moving and alleviate any discomfort caused by it.
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Poor Quality Sleep And Insomnia Are Probably Major Causes Of Morning Back Pain
Dont get me wrong: some people sleep just fine and still have morning back pain. But poor quality sleep and pain tend definitely to go together,15 and mornings can be the roughest part of that link.
The more interesting question is the chicken/egg thing: which comes first? Pain or sleeplessness? Once you have both insomnia and pain, they surely cause each other, but one side of that equation is probably more important than the other, like a cyclist pushing much harder on one pedal than the other.
In 2017, Gerhart et al studied the which-came-first question of pain and insomnia in 105 chronic low back pain patients.16 Their subjects bravely filled out five detailed questionnaires per day for two weeks thats quite a lot of paperwork tracking and rating many aspects of their pain and sleep quality. The goal was to study lagged temporal associations: what tends to happen after what? Are bad sleeps often followed by bad days with back pain? Are rough days with back pain followed by lousy sleeps?
Yes and no to those two questions.
Poorer sleep was strongly linked to everything being worse which is about as surprising as a dog barking at a squirrel. Its the timing of that relationship that this study zoomed in on, and not only did a bad night clearly herald trouble across the board the next day more pain, more disability, more doom and gloom but especially during the early part of the day.
Discovering The Truth About Your Mattress
You may be in love with your bed, but that doesnt mean it is in love with you back. Research has discovered numerous signs which indicate that a persons bed is to blame for their back soreness, especially in the morning. Pay close attention to how you or your partner behaves throughout the night. If you have any of the following sleep-disturbing signs, it may be time to replace your mattress.
- You wake up frequently during the night for no apparent reason.
- You toss and turn a lot or cant get comfortable.
- You feel increased pressure on parts of your body when laying in certain positions.
- You feel swallowed up by your bed.
- Your bed feels flat and unforgiving on the curves of your body.
- Your waking back pain goes away after about 20-30 minutes.
Back pain can be caused by several things, but if your bed is to blame then it should be very easy to tell. Your back pain may not be caused by something serious. In fact, studies show that about 56% of people who sleep on a medium-to-firm mattress have less back pain in the morning than their softer-mattress-having counterparts.
In general, sleep experts advise people to get a new bed ever 8 to 10 years. It may be that your mattress has served you well for a very long time.
However, it may also be time to replace it for something better if its causing you pain.
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Articles Like This Dont Write Themselves
Suggested price to continue reading is $6 USD.? Dont want to pay? Just keep on scrollin by! Like passing a street busker.
You do not have to pay to continue reading. The suggested price really is just a suggestion. I refuse to clutter my pages with typical internet advertising so instead you get a strongly worded suggestion to support my work. But only in a few of the most substantive and popular articles.
And why six bucks? I would rather suggest $3 for this, honestly, but my hands are tied. Its weird, but $5 online purchases are rejected by credit card companies at an extraordinary rate, because that price point is strongly associated with fraud . And under $5, the fees start to defeat the purpose of the donation. So $6 is the minimum viable price point for a micro-transaction.
But, if youve come this far with me, you can see that this is a super deep dive into the topic of morning back pain, like a small ebook that I could easily be selling to Kindle users . Certainly its more than a mere article: its an actively maintained resource, heavily referenced, and ad-free for millions of readers over the years. Please help it exist.
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Vancouver, Canada
Why Is Back Pain Worse In The Morning
Even if youre an early bird, getting out of bed when you suffer from back pain can be daunting. As many patients know, a sunrise can leave them stiff, sore and wondering why they have morning back pain.
For many patients, morning back pain isnt a symptom of a larger spinal issue, but a manifestation of other bad habits. Before seeking professional help consider common environmental causes of back pain:
- Bad Mattress: Firm bedding supports your spine better through the night, and well-worn, cratered mattresses may aggravate your back while you sleep.
- Poor Sleep Position: Sleeping on your stomach causes your lower back to extend, placing it under pressure. Side sleepers who dont bend their knees may also be irritating their backs as they sleep.
- Poor Ergonomics: Bad posture? Work in a bad environment? Your ergonomics may take a toll on your back that worsens at night when youre still.
If youve sorted out the environmental factors that contributes to morning back pain, it might be a medical condition that causes those achy mornings. Youll need to seek a professional diagnosis for treatment options, but you may suffer from:
Morning back pain can have many contributing factors, so consulting with experts at Front Range Orthopedics & Spine in our three locations Longmont, Lafayette and Frederick can help you locate the root of your pain and treat it.
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Early Morning Pain Relief
Improving your sleeping habits is one way to reduce the pain of sciatica when waking up, but if you continue to feel pain the next morning then you may be able to improve your condition with a few simple stretches. Start by kneeling on a mat and adopting the childs pose, before going into a lumbar extension.
Roll onto your back, gently relieve pressure in your lower back by twisting your hips while keeping your shoulders on the ground in a Russian twist, and elongate the spine and stretch the hip flexors, gluteus maximus, and piriformis muscles by pulling your knee to your chest while keeping your other leg straight.
Pain That Feels Better When Changing Positions
Depending on the underlying cause of pain, some positions will be more comfortable than others. For example, with spinal stenosis walking normally may be difficult and painful, but leaning forward onto something, such as a shopping cart, may reduce pain. How symptoms change with shifting positions can help identify the source of pain.
See Spinal Stenosis Symptoms and Diagnosis
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