Quality sleep for lower back pain: how to organize?

For every per­son, an impor­tant dai­ly event is a night’s rest with a full sleep. It is the key to good health and high per­for­mance, but not in a sit­u­a­tion where back pain is formed. An unpleas­ant painful sen­sa­tion lit­er­al­ly plagues both dur­ing the day and at night, pre­vent­ing you from sleep­ing prop­er­ly. The caus­es of pain can be var­i­ous dis­eases and injuries of the back, patho­log­i­cal process­es. But regard­less of them, it is nec­es­sary to orga­nize a night’s sleep in such a way as to reduce pain and alle­vi­ate the con­di­tion as much as pos­si­ble. What can be done?

Causes of pain: fatigue, injury, illness

In rel­a­tive­ly healthy and young peo­ple, the most com­mon cause of dis­com­fort in the low­er back is fatigue and mus­cle strain. Then, after a short rest and tak­ing a warm bath, the dis­com­fort dis­ap­pears. If it is a strong and sharp low­er back pain that occurs acute­ly or devel­ops over time, the caus­es may be dis­eases of the mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem, spinal injuries, or prob­lems with periph­er­al nerves.

Pain in the low­er back of the pri­ma­ry nature is pos­si­ble, usu­al­ly its caus­es are dis­eases asso­ci­at­ed with the skele­tal mus­cles or the spine. These include osteo­chon­dro­sis with its pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tive changes in the area of ​​the inter­ver­te­bral discs and the ver­te­bral bod­ies them­selves. Anoth­er cause may be a dis­ease such as spondy­larthro­sis — dam­age to the joints between the ver­te­brae.

Caus­es of pain of a dif­fer­ent nature are sec­ondary and can be pro­voked by sco­l­i­ot­ic defor­mi­ty of the spinal col­umn, infec­tious dis­eases local­ized in the bone tis­sue of the spine, for exam­ple, osteomyelitis or tuber­cu­lo­sis. Sore­ness can occur as a result of osteo­poro­sis, Bechterew’s dis­ease, or neo­plasms in the par­aver­te­bral region. Often, pain is a symp­tom of a spinal injury, even if it seemed insignif­i­cant — jump­ing from a height or falling onto your back threat­ens with frac­tures. Many oth­er rea­sons can also lead to pain in the back and low­er back, which a doc­tor can fig­ure out. It is impor­tant for the patient dur­ing treat­ment to alle­vi­ate his con­di­tion, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the peri­od of rest or night sleep.

Organization of rest on the background of pain in the back

In order to give rest to tense mus­cles and lig­a­ments, reduce pain, you need a full and high-qual­i­ty sleep. But against the back­ground of low­er back pain, it is not so easy to find a com­fort­able posi­tion and bed for this. If sore­ness and dis­com­fort have become almost every­day com­pan­ions, you need to change the mat­tress, and often even bed mod­els — feath­er beds, soft sag­ging mat­tress­es and iron beds with a sink­ing bot­tom are banned.

A bed for prop­er rest should have a rigid frame, and if there are prob­lems with the skele­ton, a wood­en shield is used as a base, and a mat­tress is laid on top. Under the weight of the body, there should be no deflec­tion of the base due to soft mate­ri­als, espe­cial­ly in the lum­bar area. But no less harm­ful is sleep­ing on the floor or on a bare wood­en board with­out a mat­tress at all, the sleep­ing place must take phys­i­o­log­i­cal curves along the spine in order to unload the mus­cles.

A full night’s rest can be pro­vid­ed by spe­cial ortho­pe­dic mat­tress­es or a water bed with a den­si­ty reg­u­la­tor. Sleep­ing on such beds helps to take the most relaxed posi­tion for the back, allows you to relax tense mus­cles and relieve their reflex spasm.

Poses to relieve back pain

To relieve or com­plete­ly elim­i­nate back pain, it is impor­tant to choose the right posi­tion in bed. Sleep­ing on your stom­ach leads to mus­cle ten­sion and increased sore­ness, so you should sleep on your back with your knees slight­ly bent. This reduces ten­sion in the broad back mus­cles. The pil­low should be placed under the area of ​​​​only the head with the neck, the back and shoul­ders should lie on the mat­tress. Extend­ing the knees with stretch­ing the legs while sleep­ing on the back pro­vokes pain in the low­er back, so a roller can be placed under the area of ​​​​the popliteal fos­sae. This will help relax the mus­cles and relieve ten­sion in the ten­dons.

The fetal posi­tion helps to reduce low­er back pain: you need to lie down, turn­ing on one of the sides, pulling your knees and bring­ing the femoral region to your stom­ach. In this posi­tion, the back arch­es, due to which the mus­cles relax, and pres­sure is removed from the inter­ver­te­bral discs. For con­ve­nience, it is worth plac­ing a pil­low between the legs, this will unload the low­er back and femoral mus­cles.

Sleeping on your stomach: little tricks

If, due to injury or oth­er cir­cum­stances, sleep only on the stom­ach is pos­si­ble, impro­vised devices can relieve pain. Under the area of ​​​​the groin and pelvis, you can put a roller, a fold­ed bath tow­el or a small pil­low. This is nec­es­sary so that the lum­bar zone does not bend for­ward, tens­ing the mus­cles and squeez­ing the discs. The use of tight belts or corsets for the lum­bar region can help, and if they are not at hand, tight pulling with a tow­el and tying a knot in front just before bed­time will help out. This will help keep your low­er back sta­ble and pre­vent it from lean­ing for­ward when you lie down.

How to get out of bed in the morning with pain

In addi­tion to the fact that a good night’s sleep is impor­tant, it is also nec­es­sary to get out of bed after wak­ing up so as not to increase the pain. After wak­ing up, it is nec­es­sary to stretch the mus­cles of the legs and arms, bend­ing and straight­en­ing them sev­er­al times while lying in bed. Then you need to slow­ly, if the dream was on your back, roll onto your stom­ach, low­er­ing one leg and lean­ing on your knee, smooth­ly trans­fer the weight of the whole body to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe arms and the sup­port­ing leg. Then rise slow­ly, with­out sharp jerks, focus­ing on both arms and legs, thus unload­ing the lum­bar region. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that sharp bends and turns pro­voke back pain, smooth­ness and slow­ness in move­ments are nec­es­sary.

You can stand up, rolling on your side, bend­ing your knees in par­al­lel, lift the body on your hands, lean­ing on the cor­ner of the bed, while grad­u­al­ly low­er­ing your legs from the bed. Your back should be kept straight when lift­ing. It is for­bid­den to get out of bed, rais­ing your back and bend­ing your low­er back, this will lead to a sharp attack of pain.

Of course, only sleep­ing in the cor­rect posi­tion in most patients will not elim­i­nate the pain, so you need to see a doc­tor and treat­ment against the back­ground of prop­er rest and sleep.