Back pain CURE: Tips to ease excruciating symptoms triggered by SLEEP BACK pain and neck pain affects hundreds of people - most commonly those between the ages of 45 and 54. However, those hit hardest often find their aches and sometimes excruciating pains are triggered by sleep. GETTYNew research from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has revealed middle age is the time when people are most likely to see the cumulative effects of poor posture, which can in turn trigger back and neck pain.The research from this age group revealed nearly two fifths - 39 per cent - who have suffered from back or neck pain identify sleeping, or even their mattress as the trigger for those aches, and over half - 58 per cent - admit pain keeps them from sleeping.With 87 per cent of people in this group saying they wake up with back or neck pain – approximately one in eight people every day – the BCA is now urging people to pay attention to their sleeping habits.Rishi Loatey, BCA chiropractor, said: “As we age, our bodies start to see the cumulative effect of years of poor posture, which can in turn lead to back pain.
GETTY“For many this pain is triggered by sleep. “To help stop sleep from becoming a painful experience, I recommend sleeping on your side, so your neck isn’t twisted all night.“In this position, your spine should be parallel to the mattress and should not sag (bed too soft) or bow (bed too hard).“Before bending or doing anything sudden or strenuous in the morning make sure your body - and your back - has woken up. Devoting time to exercise in the daytime is also an important step to build muscle tone and promote good posture.” 6 Simple exercises to prevent painful back pain Try these 6 physiotherapist-approved exercises to prevent a painful back pain. Try these 6 Simple exercises to prevent painful back pain To help stop sleep from becoming a painful experience, I recommend sleeping on your side, so your neck isn’t twisted all night. Neil Robinson, a sleep expert at Sealy, said: “We recently conducted a world sleep census which revealed that almost a third of people aged 45 to 54 say they never wake up feeling refreshed.“
To help ensure you get a restful night’s sleep it’s important to have a good mattress.“Numerous people consider their mattress to be a dull purchase, but investing in a mattress which is tailored to be supportive for you is so important for your health.”More generally, the way people sleep and their mattresses are the third most common trigger for Brits with back or neck pain, affecting 34 per cent of those people. The BCA has offered five tips for those who struggle to sleep.GETTYUpdate your mattressChiropractors recommend buying a new mattress at least every 10 years. Mattresses lose their support over time, so if you can feel the springs through your mattress, or the mattress is no longer level, your mattress is no longer providing the support you need.Those looking for a new mattress can now choose the one that’s right for them with Sealy’s innovative new bed selector app www.sealy.co.uk/bed-selectorBuy the right mattressEnsure your mattress is supportive for you. If you share a bed with your partner, it’s a good idea to look for two single mattresses which can be joined together, to ensure you both get the support you needStart your day rightGetting up out of bed too quickly in the morning could lead to injury.
When you first wake up, try doing some gentle stretches and avoid doing anything too strenuous or making any sudden movementsGETTYGet movingActivities such as yoga, which can improve posture, are recommended for people in the 45-54 age group. Other exercise which helps build your abdominal muscles could also help to protect your back. When exercising, warming up and warming down is essential to ensure that your joints and muscles don’t get a shock.Straighten UpThe BCA’s Straighten Up UK programme offers a series of daily exercise videos to help build muscle tone and improve posture. The BCA advises that, if you are experiencing pain for more than a few days, then you should seek professional help, as an undiagnosed problem could lead to longer-term problems if left untreated. To find out where your local chiropractor is, please visit www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk and search for a chiropractor.Odd, really - I'm in a shop called Dreams, yet I'm having what can only be described as a nightmare.
I'm trying to buy a new bed. So far, I've lain down on half a dozen and have already forgotten whether I preferred the Silentnight Harmony, the Dunlopillo Dickens, or the Hypnos Beethoven. Which is bad news, really, since there are at least another 50 to go and already my back is starting to play up. Bed behaviour: Brits get only 6.6hours of sleep per night, rather than the recommended eight Yes, like 49 per cent of people in this country, I get some form of lower lumbar aggravation at least once a year and, like 99.9 per cent of people, I don't have a clue what bed would suit me best. Nor do I know how to find out. Amazing, given that we spend one-third of our lives asleep. Or not asleep, in my case. Recently, I've noticed my joints echoing the creaking sounds the bed makes each time I turn over. Plus more of my dreams seem to feature me clinging on to the edge of a cliff, upon which I wake up and find I'm trying to stop myself falling into the mattress valley that has opened up between me and my wife.
According to the Sleep Council - the promotional wing of the National Bed Federation - we Brits get only 6.6hours of sleep per night, rather than the recommended eight. Dr Chris Idzikowski, of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says that if we all treated ourselves to a new bed, we would get an extra 42 minutes' shut-eye per night. Not surprisingly, the bed industry is big on the benefits of swapping your old mattress for a new, preferably more expensive one. The Furniture Industry Research Association claims a bed can lose 70 per cent of its strength over a ten-year period, while the Sleep Council warns that, like a marriage, a bed will start deteriorating after seven years. As a result, practically every mattress on the market tries to talk us into bed with quasi-medical promises. Beds are given names like Ortho and Posturepedic, while the hardest mattresses are all classified as 'orthopaedic'. Much is made in the marketing blurb about the scientific research that has gone into the making of the mattresses.
Tempur use an absorbent foam developed by Nasa scientists in order to minimise G-forces on astronauts during take-off. Not everyone, however, is convinced. 'I have often wondered what the word orthopaedic means in the context of buying a bed,' says Steve Krikler, a senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon based in Coventry. 'Most of the terminology is impressive-sounding jargon to persuade you to part with your hardearned cash, without any real evidence. A bad mattress can exacerbate back pain, but can it actually give you a bad back? I'm not sure there's any scientific evidence to back that up.' What gives you a bad back is not lying in bed - it's sudden twisting and lifting. 'It is a bit crazy', agrees the woman from the BackCare helpline. 'There used to be a school of thought that if you had a bad back, you needed a hard bed. The fact is, it depends on a person's weight, height and age.' And what kind do I need? She can't tell me. 'We only offer a listening ear,' she replies, 'not medical advice.'
surprising, as there doesn't seem to be a doctor in the world who is qualified in the field of optimum sleep angles or the best bed for your Just as no one had heard of an IT consultant 30 years ago, so the post of clinical snoozician or horizontalist has yet to be invented. There has been some medical examination of the bed-makers'In a study in the journal Spine, back-pain patients were asked to compare comfort levels of a hard mattress, a body-conforming foam mattress and a waterbed.'The waterbed and foam mattress did influence back symptoms, function and sleep more positively, as opposed to the hardBut the differences were small,' said the researchers. Which isn't much for the average mattress-purchaser to go on. It seems the closest you can get to expert advice is a Sleep Council leaflet, entitled The Bed Buyers' Guide, which tries to de-mystify the inner workings of a mattress. It explains the different type of spring configurations.
are open springs, arranged in rows and connected by a thick, spiral Then there are pocket springs, housed in individual fabric pockets, allowing them to work independently of each other. when you turn over, the spring-ripple effect stays on your side and doesn't spread to your partner. And that's not all. There are different types of foam mattress: latex (which springs back when you get up) and visco-elastic, or 'memory foam', which doesn't, but leaves an imprint of your body. But you have to be careful, warns BackCare, not to get stuck in your own moulded hollow. 'Lying in one position can create stiffness. A mattress should be supportive enough to take the weight of your body without sagging, but firm enough for you to turn with ease.' Bed Buyers' Guide has a picture of the perfect back shape when you're lying on your side. Think of the spine as a mouth and it should be neither tight-lipped, nor bendy and smiley, but more of a gentle, faraway grin.
Too rigid a back will mean your body isn't relaxed. Too slouchy and you'll be sleeping with a bent spine. The trouble is, when you're lying on a bed in a retail outlet, you can't see the shape of your back. And you don't half feel a fool asking the sales assistant: 'Is my spine smiley or sad?' The solution is to go bed-buying with someone else, preferably the person you're going to be sharing it with. Yet, instead of settling for a one-mattress-fits-both scenario, couples can have a his-and-hers arrangement, whereby you opt for two different-strength single mattresses that fit inside a zip-up double overblanket. More fool me, then, for coming to the bed shop on my own. It's just that I can't shake off memories of the time my wife and I went to John Lewis and lay there, while other shoppers stood at the foot of our bed, like they were visiting the tomb of a medieval king and queen. It seems few of us feel relaxed lying down in a department store. Jessica Alexander of the Sleep Council says: 'Eighty per cent of people spend less than two minutes trying the bed in which they're going to spend 3,000 hours every year.
'We recommend you spend at least ten minutes, ideally 30. If you're embarrassed, listen to music with your eyes closed. Some couples even wear their pyjamas!' Instead, I ask the sales assistant if it's all right to take my shoes off, and try the mattresses at my own pace and in my own trousers. Even so, with 50-plus beds to get through, I put in barely a minute on each. Afterwards, I write down words such as 'squidgy' and discover that mattress 'ratings' (one for rock-hard, five for wobbly) are unreliable. Similarly, the number of springs in the mattress doesn't seem to have a huge bearing on how comfortable it is by any stretch of the imagination. The other thing I discover is that if my chosen mattress and I don't get on, a quickie divorce can be arranged. 'If you've got a bad back, it's worth finding a retailer who will take a mattress back,' says Jessica. After two-and-a-half hours of being supine, I have narrowed the choice down to four mattresses, costing between £399 and £919 (the most expensive is £2,899).