How to Relieve Lower Back Pain While Sleeping – Getting Comfortable
Image sourced from Canva
How to relieve lower back pain while sleeping – Lower back pain is a common spinal condition characterized by various symptoms, such as numbness, tingling, discomfort, and pain. Although lower back pain affects your daily life, it can make your sleep even harder.
Most people find it hard to find a comfortable sleeping position to relieve pain. Bear in mind that 7-8 hours of sleep at night is essential to your overall health and wellbeing. Research shows that people with poor sleep patterns experience severe back pain.
How to Relieve Lower Back Pain While Sleeping
Studies highlight that certain sleeping positions can help relieve lower back pain. Make sure you sleep in a position that helps ease your spinal pain. Experts recommend sleeping with a pillow underneath or between your legs. The purpose is to provide extra support to your lumbar spine and soothe the muscles.
Get a Quality Mattress
Health professionals recommend people with back pain must have firm mattresses. However, people with lower back pain may find it hard to sleep on a hard mattress. On the other hand, a soft mattress can lead to problems, causing your joints to twist.
As a result, you feel more pain. Try different types of mattresses to see what works best for you. If you are comfortable sleeping on a hard mattress, get a firm mattress, but make sure you purchase a high-end brand to provide extra support to your spinal column and muscles in the lumbar spine.
Perform Lower Back Pain Exercises
Performing lower back pain exercises before going to bed is an excellent way to reduce pain. Doctors recommend core strengthening exercises to relieve lower back pain. These exercises strengthen your muscles in the lower back, hips, abdomen, and pelvis to ease the pain.
For example, getting into a plank position for at least 30 seconds allows your spine to maintain proper alignment. The exercise also engages your abdominal and lower back muscles. Plank is one of the best lower back pain exercises you can do before sleep to loosen your tight muscles.
Yoga stretches are a form of exercise that can help relieve lower back pain if you perform them carefully. You can try cat-cow, downward-facing dog, sphinx pose, cobra pose, extended trainable, bridge pose, and locust pose before bed. If it is hard to perform any of these poses, you can try the modified versions.
Take Back Pain Medication
Sometimes, it is not easy to sleep with back pain even if you stretch your back with yoga poses or perform other core strengthening exercises. In that case, doctors suggest taking over-the-counter (OTC) pain-relieving drugs, such as NSAIDs.
Naproxen and ibuprofen are common NSAIDs taken to relieve lower back pain. You can take these drugs to help reduce swelling, inflammation, tight muscles, and pain in muscles and joints. Other back pain medication options are opioids and narcotics.
Bear in mind that back pain medication can lead to various side effects, such as indigestion, nausea, vomiting, headaches, allergic reactions, etc. Likewise, opioids can lead to high dependency and addiction. Therefore, you must take back pain medication carefully.
Change Your Sleeping Position
How to relieve lower back pain while sleeping in different positions? Some sleeping positions will keep your spine’s shape as natural as possible, alleviating pain by decreasing pressure on your back muscles and discs.
For instance, sleeping on your side is the best position for people with lower back pain. It allows you to maintain your spine’s natural curves without putting pressure on your muscles. Place a soft pillow between your legs and move your knees toward your torso to put your body in the natural position.
You can also sleep on your back to minimize pain. Although it is not effective as side sleeping, sleeping on your back is still comfortable. Experts recommend placing a pillow under your knees to provide extra support to your spine. You can also place a rolled towel under your back to maintain your spine’s natural curve.
Consult a Qualified Neurosurgeon
The tips given above can help you relieve your lower back pain. However, if medications and lifestyle changes do not relieve lower back pain, you should consult a qualified neurosurgeon as a last resort. MINT is a reputable clinic in Plano, TX, with experienced, licensed, and skilled neurosurgeons.
To date, our neurosurgeons have treated hundreds of patients with lower back pain by performing minimally invasive procedures, such as decompression, laminectomy, discectomy, foraminotomy, and Nucleoplasty.
How to relieve back pain while sleeping is an important question, and here at MINT, our neurosurgeons can give you better advice. Contact us today!
