Back and neck pain: how to wake up healthy?

Pain in the back and neck in the morn­ing can not only dis­rupt plans for the day, but can also be a sign of a seri­ous ill­ness. And even if the unpleas­ant sen­sa­tion dis­ap­pears dur­ing the day, such a prob­lem can­not be ignored. There are a lot of rea­sons why a per­son feels back pain in the morn­ing. Some of them can be elim­i­nat­ed on their own with the help of sim­ple pre­ven­tive mea­sures, and to get rid of oth­ers, you need to under­go a med­ical exam­i­na­tion and con­sult a doc­tor. How to avoid morn­ing pain in the neck and back, we will tell in this arti­cle.

Prevention of morning back pain: choosing a mattress

A full and high-qual­i­ty rest makes the morn­ing pleas­ant, and the mood is good. At night, the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal resources of the human body must be ful­ly restored.

The state after wak­ing up large­ly depends on how good a person’s sleep was. And for this you need to pay spe­cial atten­tion to choos­ing the right place for a night’s rest.

Should we be sur­prised at the back pain that accom­pa­nies wak­ing up if you had to sleep on a sim­ple fold­ing bed or a sag­ging sofa? An uncom­fort­able bed pro­vokes an incor­rect posi­tion of the body in a dream. As a result, some mus­cles do not rest, which is the cause of the ail­ment. After all, it is not for noth­ing that ortho­pe­dists, chi­ro­prac­tors, and masseurs unan­i­mous­ly argue that the best place to sleep is a bed with a good mat­tress or an ortho­pe­dic sofa.

Cur­rent­ly, there are no prob­lems with choos­ing a suit­able mat­tress — equipped with inde­pen­dent spring blocks and spring­less, dou­ble-sided, as well as sin­gle-sided, filled with mem­o­rix and coconut coir. When choos­ing, indi­vid­ual indi­ca­tors are tak­en into account — from the age of the con­sumer to the pres­ence of dis­eases. How­ev­er, do not for­get that even the best mat­tress is not able to cure pain in the back and neck, it only helps to get rid of ten­sion and unload the spine.

A good mat­tress should pro­vide reli­able sup­port for the spinal col­umn, that is, when a per­son lies down in bed, there should be no air between his body and the mat­tress. Well, if after a night spent on a com­fort­able bed, back pain, as well as neck pain is still present, then it’s def­i­nite­ly not a sleep­ing place.

Morn­ing stiff­ness some­times indi­cates the appear­ance of age-relat­ed prob­lems in the tis­sues of the spine. And if this stiff­ness is com­ple­ment­ed by a feel­ing of “goose­bumps” and numb­ness of the hands, the cause of this may be cer­vi­cal osteo­chon­dro­sis. In such cas­es, in addi­tion to choos­ing the right mat­tress, you need to think about vis­it­ing the offices of a neu­rol­o­gist and a chi­ro­prac­tor.

The right pillow can help prevent morning pain

The func­tion of a pil­low, like the func­tion of a mat­tress, is to ensure the nor­mal posi­tion of the body dur­ing the night’s rest. Ide­al­ly, the spine should be straight dur­ing sleep. If the ver­te­brae in the prone posi­tion “sag”, then the pil­low is not cho­sen cor­rect­ly. There­fore, it is not sur­pris­ing that in the morn­ing a per­son suf­fers from pain in the head, back, and neck.

The main cri­te­ri­on for the qual­i­ty of the pil­low is the absence of dis­com­fort in the cer­vi­cal ver­te­brae after wak­ing up. Its height should cor­re­spond to the lev­el of the shoul­der.

At present, pil­lows filled with polyurethane, which has a shape mem­o­ry effect, are espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar. How­ev­er, it is not at all nec­es­sary to buy adver­tised pil­lows that are not cheap, because the most cut­ting-edge mate­r­i­al becomes unus­able after a while — it turns yel­low and crum­bles. For a good sleep, sim­ple ones with feath­er fill­ing are quite suit­able. The main thing is to choose the right size of the prod­uct and the den­si­ty of the stuff­ing in order to ensure the cor­rect posi­tion of the cer­vi­cal ver­te­brae dur­ing sleep. Then the pain in the morn­ing will not both­er. How­ev­er, no mat­ter how good the pil­low is, after a cou­ple of years the feath­ers will begin to break down and it will lose its shape. There­fore, this item of bed­ding is also bet­ter to change reg­u­lar­ly.

Some doc­tors sug­gest pur­chas­ing an ortho­pe­dic sleep roll as an alter­na­tive. It is placed under the neck, as a result of which the head is in weight. Only this option is not suit­able for every­one. First of all, you still need to get used to the unusu­al posi­tion of the head. More­over, in the pres­ence of cer­tain dis­eases, sleep­ing on a roller is con­traindi­cat­ed.

Correct posture while sleeping

The next fac­tor in the appear­ance of pain in the back and neck in the morn­ing is the wrong pos­ture dur­ing sleep. The posi­tion of the body, in which there is no squeez­ing of the mus­cles, the inter­nal organs are at rest, there is no exces­sive ten­sion, con­tributes to the nor­mal restora­tion of strength. Undoubt­ed­ly, it is very dif­fi­cult for a sleep­ing per­son to con­trol the posi­tion of his own body. And yet, you should get rid of the bad habit of sleep­ing on your stom­ach with your head turned to the side. As well as from the habit of putting a palm or a fist under the cheek. The best posi­tion is when a per­son sleeps curled up. It is also use­ful to lie on your back with your legs raised and bent at the knees.

Get rid of excess body weight

Extra pounds are also one of the fac­tors in the appear­ance of pain in the back. Exces­sive weight, even when lying down, puts pres­sure on a per­son­’s spinal col­umn, pre­vent­ing them from relax­ing nor­mal­ly. And since it is not always easy to cope with extra pounds, many peo­ple pre­fer the med­ical method of get­ting rid of dis­com­fort — with the help of exter­nal anti-inflam­ma­to­ry, painkillers, warm­ing oint­ments, gels and creams. The drug and its dosage should be pre­scribed by the doc­tor after exam­in­ing the patient and estab­lish­ing the exact caus­es of pain. Attempt­ing self-treat­ment can lead to unfore­seen cir­cum­stances. For exam­ple, if the pain is due to a her­nia in the cer­vi­cal spine, the use of warm­ing agents can aggra­vate the sit­u­a­tion.

Correct posture to prevent back pain

Many of us spend a third of our lives in the work­place. There­fore, to main­tain the health of the back, as well as the neck, it is nec­es­sary to mon­i­tor the pos­ture. If dur­ing the work­ing day the spine is in a curved posi­tion, the shoul­ders are raised, and the neck is pulled for­ward to the mon­i­tor, the body is sim­ply not able to relieve the accu­mu­lat­ed ten­sion dur­ing the night and in the morn­ing, most like­ly, the per­son will feel pain in the back or neck. There­fore, if you have to sit at the com­put­er all day, you need to get up from the table from time to time for a short work­out.

If, after observ­ing all of the above rules, back pain con­tin­ues to both­er you in the morn­ing, you should con­sult a doc­tor for an exam­i­na­tion and the appoint­ment of the nec­es­sary treat­ment.