The BEST & WORST Sleeping Positions [Back Pain, Neck, & Sciatica]

This is Tom Brachy and today I'm going over the ultimate sleep position guide. We spend one third of our lives sleeping and most people don't think about how their neck's kinked. Are they on their back? Are they on their front? Are they twisted like a pretzel? Compression neuropathy, in my opinion, is one of the biggest hidden causes of nerve pain, chronic pain, muscle weakness, everything. I'm going to give you my full guide on what to do about it and we're starting now. In the proper sleep positions, you have a straight spine, but you could have the wrong curvature causing kyphosis, lordosis, or scoliosis. This then leads to lower back compression. Five percent in adults, that's huge in the United States. You could have piriformis syndrome. 2.4 million cases per year squeezing that piriformis muscle. Cervical radiculopathy, that's neck and shoulder pain. Five percent sciatica is when it gets pinched across your butt and your hamstring. Spinal stenosis, 11 percent in the United States. Sciatica, 40 percent of people will have that in their lifetime. It's very common from being uneven. You can develop back twisting, scoliosis, limb length discrepancies from sleep. You're spending seven to nine hours a night, one third of your life. This is a huge area for you to address. So I just put a ton of time in a book about chronic pain, talking about nerve pain in the feet, the legs, the hips, the back. 20 percent of people in the world, as far as adults go, suffer from this type of pain. So there's a good chance you, the viewer, might have something. And we're talking about neck pain, back pain, sciatica pain, scoliosis with a contorted spine. All of these things can be improved. And also tarsal tunnel, Baxter's nerve, Morton's neuroma, all these types of joint pains. And what I see as well, I do a lot of biomechanical exams. I'm talking to thousands of people. I would say 90 percent of adults on this planet, unless you're a fit, younger person, are unequal. That means one tighter hip, one tighter knee, one tighter foot. This leads to compression pain like sciatica, which is compressed butt muscles, tarsal tunnel, tight hamstrings, tight hips. This eventually leads to osteoarthritis. Stop this. This is one of the biggest correctable root causes. And these tricks are almost guaranteed to show improvement for the majority of the people watching you this. So do me a favor. I put a lot of time into these guides. Check out the book, share this with friends and family, help boost this channel so that we can keep giving this free information and helping people. Thank you. And at the end, I'm going to go over the big summary and the big secrets that tie it all together. The spine has four regions and three natural curves. You have your cervical, your thoracic, your lumbar, and your sacral, which is down in your butt region. Sleeping in positions that strain the neck, such as the stomach, can cause scoliosis. It can cause unequal bend. I looked at a study that basically said almost 50% of seniors in retirement age have spinal stenosis. This makes your back very sensitive to curvatures, to soreness. A lot of people have scoliosis, sciatica. In fact, if you combined all the numbers, probably the vast majority of the people on this planet have something. So we're going to start with the neck right here. This is called cervical strains. This is most commonly caused by sleeping on your stomach. When you sleep on your stomach, it helps you develop more of a lordosis. So essentially, your neck bends upward, it can cause a scoliosis on an angle leading to cervical radiculopathy, muscle strains, you can develop pain on one side or the other of your neck, your lower back due to the lordosis and the neck bend, you want to get a properly positioned pillow. And the same thing when you're sitting at a computer. If you're having a lot of pain, you might want a pillow to support that. So when I sleep on my stomach, my head is going to be curved either to one side or the other. That's going to lead to one side of your nerve roots compressed, and one side strained and stretched. This can make your arms numb, your shoulders tight. This could cause radiating nerve pain, this can make your jaw hurts, this can result in tension headaches. So the worst sleep position is sleeping on your front because it's going to cause you to twist your neck. The reason people do this is because they have a hard time breathing, they snore, they choke because of fluid in their lungs. There's a couple easy tips like nasal breathing strips. These things can help quite a bit. Check those out down below. But realistically, you have to find a way to sleep on your back or at the very least your sides. Sleeping on your front causes a lurch in your back, a sag in your stomach, and causes you to bend your neck. If you have to use this position, try a thin pillow or no pillow to keep your spine in a neutral alignment. If you have neck pain, sleep on your back. So on your back like this, and you want to make sure your neck's not curved forward or backward. The general trick is to have your ears level with your shoulders. So you don't want forward, you don't want back. So you want to get a proper firmness of pillow. You don't want it to be too thick, too low. You want it to be equal. There are great orthopedics pillows with curvatures that are probably worth trying for a few bucks. You don't want a soft pillow. If you're on your front, you want a nice thin pillow. If your pillow's too high, it's going to cause neck flexion. Opt for pillows with an adjustable. Try a memory foam pillow. Try a memory foam topper. I'm a big fan of the memory foam toppers. You don't have to get a whole new bed, but we're talking a couple inch topper that goes on top of your mattress, lets your back, your neck sink a little bit more equally. Highly recommend it. All my family members essentially tried at this point, works really well. In a perfect world, you're going to sleep on your back. And if you can, potentially, if you need to curve your bed up, if you have breathing difficulties, try nasal strips. Get the reasons for snoring evaluated. If you have to lose weight, consider losing it over time because sleeping on your front will destroy your life long term. If you sleep on your side, put a pillow between your knees and make sure the pillow fills the gap between your neck so your spine is aligned and curved well. Lower back pain, the same kind of thing. This can cause scoliosis, spinal stenosis. Scoliosis is the curving of your back. And this is usually front sleepers, side sleepers. Lower back pain is one of the most common types of debilitating chronic disease seen in the developed world. There's five lumbar vertebrae and you can have a variety of bends and scoliosis that could develop specifically from sleeping. 5% of all people over 18 have lower back pain. And one of the more common types is a herniated disc. So between your vertebrae, you can have discs and you could see it herniating and pressing against the nerve roots here. So that's the whole problem. When it gets swollen or when it slips, it presses against the nerves. So you could see here there's a herniated nodule. And one way to test this is by lifting up the leg. Usually people are really tight through their lower back, their hamstring, and this puts pressure on the nerves in your hamstring and back. Usually when I check a patient, it's very painful for them to lift up their leg that causes them a lot of pain. Spinal stenosis is when you actually have narrowing through the canal. 11% of adults get this. And when you get over the age of 65, it's a good chunk of the population, I think like 30%. If you sleep on your back, your neck is basically straight and your back's straight, but that can cause breathing issues such as snoring. So if you're married, you're not allowed to do that. This starts at about 40 to 60 on average and gets worse, but you can compress discs, nerves, muscle strains. So even if you don't have a herniated disc or a bone spur or a spinal canal that's narrowed, that's spinal stenosis, you can at the very least have muscle soreness. This leads to radiculopathy. Your nerve roots are compressed. They shoot down your legs. They can cause sciatica, nerve compression, localized through the lower back, down to the feet. You can have joint compression. So same kind of thing. If you develop stiffness, wear and tear, that causes soreness every day that makes you walk a little bit differently. For most people, I think this is a big reason why they develop osteoarthritis in the first place. They're always compensating and it's like a series of dominoes that make them knock all their joints out in a row. This can be caused by a sagging mattress, sleeping on your stomach, having your back arched, staying in the fetal position excessively on your side and being curved. This is going to cause sciatica, numbness in your legs, radiating pain. You don't want a soft mattress. That's a myth. You want a medium to a firm mattress. Don't get tricked by some of these mattress stores. They're not healthcare professionals. They just want to sell a mattress. This is kind of like buying cheap orthotics at the grocery store. They love to sell soft because they feel great at the beginning, but your body and muscles have to work a lot harder. It causes major issues. You want firmness and you want support. You also want a memory foam pillow for your neck. Ideally sleep on your back. Try nasal strips. Makes a big difference. If you have to sleep on your front, use a very thin pillow. Ideally as a compensation, you can sleep on your side. Get a pillow between your knees. Keep your spine straight. Make sure your pillow's not too thick, not too little. You can get a pillow underneath your armpit as well, but have your spouse look at you or a friend and see if your spine is straight. Sciatica refers to the compression or irritation of your sciatic region. As the nerves come out, they're going to get crunched. You can have your butt muscles like your piriformis also crunch it. Hey, I have guides on all of these below. Make sure you check them out below. Sciatica is very common now with all the sitting we do. People are working from home, they're sitting on the computer. Essentially around your butt and your butt muscles, you can develop compression of your large nerve called the sciatic nerve. Piriformis syndrome is due to the muscle that crosses over the nerve around your butt muscle. I think they're both pretty related. The way you can check it is by using your hands to check your butt to see if it's sore, if that's a compression site. It's basically the nerve that comes out of your lower sciatic region. So by lifting your leg up, you can see if the pain starts. And this sleeping position can basically be caused by twisting, excessive fetal position, sleeping on your stomach. Same thing that causes butt and back pain. What you want to do is sleep on your back. If you have really bad sciatica, you want a pillow underneath your knees. You want potentially a tiny pillow underneath your neck and you want the proper height. So you don't want to be arching or curving and you want to get your legs on top of a pillow. Experiment with pillows and cushions. Place pillows or cushions strategically to support and align your hips. Now the next one is scoliosis. The number one is if you sleep on your front, it's going to curve, as I already kind of mentioned, that's going to compress your nerve roots. Front is the worst, side is medium, back is the best if you can control your breathing problems. Hey, I come up with a guide. I go over all my best tips and tricks, including a secret one minute method that most people, watchers and most patients would agree works extremely well. It's proven by science and the parasympathetic nervous system to help you sleep. Check out that video below if you have a hard time sleeping because when I hit the mattress, I'm out immediately. I've found ways to sleep less, but have more rest when I wake up in the mornings and more energy. So make sure you check out that video link below. So the real secret is people don't sleep on their backs because they have a hard time breathing. They have choking problems. They drink alcohol. When I drink alcohol, it makes me snort. I can't sleep on my back and I'm in a rough shape the next day. Does that happen to you? The secret is you have to clean up your health. If you're obese, if you choke, if you have sleep apnea, you have to get these things diagnosed and you have to get healthier. There are a few different types of sleep apnea, but essentially when you lay on your back, your throat muscles get compressed by gravity. This essentially prevents you from breathing as efficiently. It stops your spouse from sleeping. It stops you from getting as much rest. Your sleep is less efficient and this is why a lot of people can't sleep on their back. So see right there how your throat muscles collapse under gravity. That's what causes sleep apnea. The risk factors are pretty common sense, excessive weight. So the heavier you are, that's probably the single most common risk factor. Neck circumference, that's not something you can control, but narrowed airway. Also something to take a look at with your doctor. Men get it more commonly than women. As you get older, as you drink alcohol, as you smoke, as you get congestion, and as you add health conditions like diabetes and weight gain, that adds up. While my specialty is more the biomechanics, the people I have referred to sleep clinics, huge difference. They sleep more efficiently, more energy, and less joint problems. The problem is because you're out of shape, you can't sleep on your back or your side. That's making you sleep on the front so you don't choke all night. You have to get your sleep apnea checked out. You have to get your breathing checked out. Otherwise you're going to ruin your hips, your lower back, you're going to get arthritis. And this is what happens to people. It's like a series of dominoes that fall over, knocking each other out. Get your sleep apnea checked out. That will help with your joints, your knees, your hips, your sleeping ability. Try some nasal strips. I'm going to link a video below. This is a great sleep apnea guide, helping sleep and breathe better at night. Maintain that great posture. Check out mattress toppers, nasal strips, great pillows below. These are some of my favorites. Give them a try and see if that helps your joints. If that didn't, check out my sciatica, my lower back pain, my knee pain, my ankle pain, tarsal tunnel pain guides, my peripheral neuropathy nighttime guides. These all help. And also check the guide on the all natural supplements to help you sleep. Thank you for watching. And if this helped you, make sure you give us a like or subscribe. It makes a huge difference for us.