Best Sleep Positions for Sciatica Pain Your sciatic nerve pain is acting up and it is time for bed. You are uncomfortable and you need a good night’s rest. What are the best positions for those suffering from sciatica pain? Unfortunately, there have been no scientific studies completed on the best sleep positions for sciatica pain. Also, there is a minimum amount of medical information available on the best sleep position. As someone who suffers from occasional sciatica pain, here are my desired positions for sleep when my sciatica is bothering me: • Sleeping on my side • Sleeping on my stomach • Sleeping on my back The position I favor the most when I have pain is either lying on my side or on my stomach. Also, I noticed a great firm surface aids in a good night’s sleep. For example, our master bedroom has a very soft mattress. On a rare occasion, I will sleep in our guest room which has a very hard mattress. This hard surface beats sleeping on our hardwood floors or our squishy leather couches.
But, most importantly if I am lying on my side, I need extra pillows to support my head and shoulders and knees. First, I adjust my head pillow to make sure it is slightly under my shoulders. I want my neck to be aligned and level with my spine. I do not own any of those huge fluffy pillows because if I used one, I would wake up with a pain in my neck. Next, I place two to three pillows under my knee closest to the ceiling when I am lying sideways. This seems to alleviate the pressure on my lower back and sciatica nerve. In an article written by Lauren Farrelly, she had some similar tips for sleeping on your side when you have sciatic pain. • First lie on your side, whichever one is more comfortable for you, on a flat and firm mattress. • Place your head on one or two pillows so that your head is even with your spine. You want to keep your back and neck in as straight a line as possible. • Next, bend your knee that is furthest from the mattress upwards toward your hips.
• Place two or three pillows under your knee so that your leg is supported. • Try and sleep in this position for as long as you can. Home › Expert Blogs › Defeating Chronic Pain Without Drugs Submitted by Dr. Michael J. Cooney, D.C. on January 27th, 2014 , you already know how back or neck pain hampers the quality of your sleep. I always make a point to talk with every patient about their mattress and their pillow. Medium-firm replaces extra-firm as the most recommended mattress New innovations in mattress construction offer added comfort Your pillow matters too! Johns Hopkins pain management specialist recommends Calmare Therapy for RSD painYour First Doctor Visit for Back Pain Log in to Discuss this Post Sign Up for FREE to spineadvisor, SpineUniverse's monthly eNewsletterPureBliss 3" Latex MattressToppers, Latex Pillows, Waterproof Mattress Protector. EverEden talalay latex mattress topper on the too firm Simmons Beautyrest.
ILD rating on soft and medium all natural EverEden talalay latex mattress toppers?For many of us, it’s about 40 prone, self-conscious seconds, clothes on, in a showroom, staring into a fluorescent light, followed by an “I’ll take it” that’s more about relief than approval. But wait, there’s not a lot of relief, because the markup on mattresses is mysterious enough that it’s impossible to know if you’ve been taken or not. And your 40-second test didn’t tell you much anything about whether this is a good location for you to sleep, fuck, and scan Twitter for the next two decades. That’s why a new approach to selling mattresses is so novel, and so welcome. Casper is one of these new-age businesses. Based in New York City, it doesn’t have a showroom. It ships the mattress to you, in a compact box. That’s right: Your mattress comes to your house in a box via UPS! You cut along the dotted line and—voila!—like a pool toy or a Stephen A. Smith diatribe, the mattress inflates.
You position it on the bed, and then comes the really relaxing part: You have 100 days to decide if it’s the mattress for you. This approach marks Casper—and a similar rival, Leesa—as part of the new wave of consumer goods sellers with a decidedly consumer-first focus. Think Warby Parker and Netflix. The queen-sized example Casper sent to my home goes for $850, with a $50 discount coupon floating on the Web, which is very competitive for a good mattress. In fact, if it lasts as long as my previous mattress (20 years), it'll be a stinking bargain. (Casper does offer a 10-year warranty on top of the 100-day evaluation period, and claims that to sell the same product in stores it would need to charge three times more. Some of the latex mattress makers offer a 25-year warranty.) So the big question: Is this mattress any good? I put it through its paces for 30 wintry nights, then spoke with the Men’s Health sleep expert, Dr. C. William Winter, about what I learned and what you should be thinking about when you pick a mattress.
(Check out the Best Sleep Positions to find out what the way you sleep says about you.) It wasn’t that long ago that nearly all mattresses were built around coiled springs. There were outliers, like the Temper-Pedic (memory foam) and Sleep Numbers (air bladder) brands that you likely heard marketed on the radio, but it was a world dominated by Serta, Sealy, and Simmons. That’s changed to a degree in recent years, with non-spring-based mattresses increasing their market share. There are air-bladder-based mattresses, like those made by Sleep Number. They promise endless adjustability. You can change the amount of air in the bladder on a daily—heck, hourly—basis. But most people don’t want endless change; they want to set it and forget it, for a long period of time. On the negative side, the mechanical nature of the air bladder introduces the ability for your mattress to “break." A latex mattress is another option. Its selling points: personalization, durability, and eco-friendliness.
"The cool thing [about latex mattresses] is that they are completely customizable,” says Winter, who sleeps on one, from Savvy Rest. “You could have a mattress split down the middle, where your side is different than your partner’s side. And the absence of springs means one less thing that can wear out. "Theoretically, the mattress never needs to be replaced. If part of it wore out or needed to be replaced, you could simply open the liner and replace the faulty layer with a new piece, which isn’t terribly expensive,” says Winter. He adds: “If your needs change or your preferences change—or your partner changes—you can unzip the mattress and pull her layers out, and throw them out, and get new layers for your new girlfriend." Memory foam mattresses—like Tempur-Pedic—are celebrated for their body-enveloping support. People with back pain often sing their praises. On the other hand, that enveloping can make them uncomfortable on hot nights and can make moving around on the mattress difficult.
And sometimes it’s very important that we be able to move around on our mattresses. “It’s like screwing on a marshmallow,” Dr. Winter writes in an email about foam mattresses in general, adding, "I unfortunately have to disagree with the band Spinal Tap's conclusion, 'The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin’.’ The Casper is a bit of a hybrid, with a latex layer on top and the memory foam underneath. You get the benefits of both, Casper claims. What you lose, though, by purchasing from a startup with a lean business model and an eye on costs, is the ability to customize it. Large, deep, cushy mattresses have taken the market by storm in recent years, with some exceeding 14 inches in depth. Dr. Winter said that while the plush tops no doubt feel very comfortable, a lot of factors go into what’s right for you. The Casper is just 10 inches thick, with a 1 1/2-inch synthetic latex layer atop a 1 1/2 inch layer, this one of memory foam, with 7 inches of foam as a base.
The Leesa has a similar mattress, which was just redesigned (and a similar 100-day vetting period). Even if you go to the independent mattress seller’s store and put in the Consumer Reports' recommended 10 minutes of lying-around time, you’re not going to know much till you sleep a night on the darn thing. When you do, you might find the mattress is too firm and hurts your back, or what was pleasingly plush in the showroom is claustrophobically enveloping or sweat pore-dilatingly hot in the wee hours. In fact, the only thing that Dr. Winter recommends in purchasing a new mattress is that you have a guaranteed window to return or replace it. “I’d avoid a mattress deal or a mattress dealership that says you buy, you own it,” Winter says. “You can’t just sit there, lie flat on your back in your street clothes, and say this is the mattress for me for the next X number of years. “I’d encourage guys to work out a deal so the mattress can always come back in, at least, the first month."
While a 100-night trial period is great marketing, my experience was that it took about a week to make a decision. My first couple nights with the Casper were a bit off-putting. I had, strangely enough, grown accustomed to the trench that ran through the middle of our bed from 20 years of sleeping with my wife. Gravity—and our great love for each other, honey—pulled at us inexorably each evening. If we didn’t come together, it was because someone didn’t want to. And sleeping close to each other has its benefits. Recent research showed that couples that slept within touching distance of each other got more, better rest. By Night #3 we were past the newness of it, and we settled in. Casper’s latex-over-memory foam construction gives it some of what Dr. Winter calls that “reinserted into the womb” feeling. At the same time, the latex is firm enough that you—and your sex life—aren’t swallowed by it. After a week on the Casper, my wife said that a pain she had been feeling in her leg and hip through the fall had gone away.