“Waking up on the wrong side of the bed,” as it turns out, is more accurate than you think.
For the millions of Americans who don’t get enough sleep, a myriad of health problems and sleep disorders can develop. However, even if you do get enough sleep, there’s no promise of waking out feeling well rested and ready to start the day.
Waking up is hard enough on Mondays or when you need to catch that morning train. But are you waking up with a sore neck? The problem can go much further than your standard ache and pain.
Poor sleep, including sleep that stains the neck, can be just as damaging as a lack of sleep. That is why we are going over ways you can fix that crick in your neck and wake up feeling fresh again. As it turns out, it is easier than you would think.
What’s Causing My Neck Pain?
If we’re going to fix your pain problem, we’ll need to start at the root of the issue. Naturally, neck problems are more than skin deep.
Neck pain in the night can be caused by many factors including addiction. That can be solved by Addiction Helper. However, there is usually one culprit and many ways it can work—and that’s your spine.
Your spine is a very sensitive, pertinent part of your anatomy. The spine holds nerve endings that are responsible for sending and receiving commands across your entire body. Without it, you couldn’t move.
A sore neck and a tingling sensation can almost always be traced back to the state of the back. However, the way the back becomes strained will be different for every person. For example, a lumpy or uneven mattress will pull the back in unnatural directions.
The same can be said for a bad pillow. In either case, poor spinal alignment, especially upper spine and neck alignment, is forcing your body to move in ways it was not designed to.
The worst part? Sometimes, this spinal misalignment happens before you even fall asleep. Reading while in bed for too long or in too strained a position can misalign your spine and keep it that way throughout the night.
So naturally, we’ll need to fix that neck pain of yours by straightening out your back and making sure nothing’s strained throughout the night. And we have a few ideas for getting that accomplished.
Mattresses
The first step you can take starts with the place you’re sleeping. In this case, your mattress.
How old is your mattress? When’s the last time you flipped it over? Do you like your mattress?
Your mattress is where you spend about a third of your life. So doesn’t it make sense to invest in a good mattress if the answers to the above questions aren’t great?
A good mattress will reduce the weight on your pressure points and allow them to sink into the mattress. Then, the less weighted portions of your body will be supported by the rest of your mattress.
The most popular mattresses of today are based on memory foam, which can do both without much hassle. A good mattress will ensure that your body is straightened out, but it won’t fix your sleeping posture.
To make the most of a good mattress, you’ll need to sleep on your side or back. Stomach sleeping is inherently stressful to the neck, as it forces you to turn your head at night to breathe. But that’s not the only thing you’ll need to go along with your new mattress.
For backache, most people opt for easily available options such as ice and heat or over-the-counter medicines. If the pain is severe enough to disrupt your daily activities, your GP might prescribe stronger pain relievers. Often, these are opioid pain relievers such as oxycodone (Percocet, OxyContin) or hydrocodone (Zohydro ER, Hysingla ER).
Opioids work for short-term relief from backache, but they’re powerful drugs and can be highly risky. Opioids are addictive and long-term use of these drugs can cause uncomfortable side effects. You may experience such problems as:
Tolerance: when your system has become attuned to the drug so much that the only way to feel the same effect is to take more of it.
Acetaminophen overdose: taking significant amounts of opioids with this substance can lead to organ failure or a damaged liver.
Physical dependence: when your body continues to rely on the drug, even when the back pain is gone. If you stop the drug, you may experience symptoms of withdrawal like diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, trouble sleeping and chills.
Addiction: when you use the drug compulsively. You may even be so hooked that you’ll do anything to obtain the drugs, whether it’s lying about your pain or seeing multiple doctors.
Pillows
Perhaps even more important than your mattress, your pillow is the key to a restful night’s sleep without the pain.
Pillows are responsible for supporting the head while keeping it in alignment with the rest of the body. Pillows come in many shapes and sizes, but if you want a great starting point for pillows, we’d recommend checking out cervical ones.
Cervical pillows, as the name would imply, are pillows specifically designed to mold to and support the neck. These pillows attempt to do so in many different ways, but most of them come with a sort of indentation.
The idea is that your head will fit into the indentation, while the rest of the pillow will rise to support the neck. These pillows usually work best if you sleep on your back, but there are many different cervical pillows available for all sorts of sleeping positions.
If you don’t know where to start, cervical pillow reviews can help you sort the wheat from the chaff and start sleeping better as soon as tonight.
Outside Help
Sometimes, even with the right pillow and mattress, you’ll still wake up sore as ever before. The sad truth is, even with the right materials, if your back and neck are misaligned, nothing short of correcting the problem at the source is going to work.
In these cases, it is time to report to more professional methods.
Neck pain and headaches induced by neck pain from inadequate sleeping positions can all be remedied by the work of licensed chiropractics. Professionals will be able to re-align portions of your back and work out cricks in your neck that you may not have known where even there.
Many chiropractic offices also specialize in headaches & neck pain specifically, so be sure to do your research before visiting your chiropractor and sort out the office that’s right for you.
Final Thoughts
From your mattress and pillow to your sleeping position, getting your neck aligned with the rest of your back is the key to waking up fully rested and without neck pain. If you’re dealing with a sore neck, we hope you try out these tips and tricks to get yourself back and working again.
Remember that not every solution is going to be the one for you. Only you know the way you sleep and where, and likewise, only you can take the steps you need to take to make sure your neck pain is a thing of the past.