Why Do I Have Back Pain When I Sleep?

This is a good question. It seems like when you’re sleeping, you’re laying down, you’re resting, that pain and those kind of symptoms would be less. But in some patients, they have worse back pain when they’re sleeping. So let’s take a moment to look at the final structure. This is the spine. You can see here you have disks in between the bones. These disks are really important because they act like shock absorbers, they allow for movement, and they can get injured. When they get injured, it’s like a sprained ankle. So what happens when you sprain your ankle? It swells up, right? Same thing happens to the disks. That swelling can be kept in check by moving around and by going through your day.

And then when you lay down at night to go to sleep, that pressure of you being in gravity and your weight kinda goes away. And that pressure’s been keeping the swelling in check. So you lay down and it just swells up. That swelling causes a lot of pain, and it causes a lot of pressure on the nerves that live right next to the disks. It’s really common to see that patients who have more pain while they’re sleeping, part of it has to do with the sleeping position, too. This is definitely a factor.

The best position I could recommend if patients can adhere to it, because everybody has a sleeping position that they have ingrained in their routine and it’s really hard to break that sometimes. But sleeping on your side with a pillow between your knees, and a pillow on your head, that keeps your head in the middle instead of doing this. The pillow between the knees kinda acts like a kickstand. It keeps you from rolling and twisting at night. That twisting, the disk does not like the twisting, especially with the swelling, so that helps a lot. Typically, we’ll see a big improvement in these symptoms with chiropractic care, and also with a change in the sleeping position. Pain usually will abate in the morning gradually as you move around, and it kinda pumps that inflammation, that fluid away from that area. But we wanna see a more sustained, a more long-term healing and fix for this problem. And chiropractic care can definitely help with rehabbing these disks that have been injured.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic (in Petaluma, CA), and this has been your Health Minute.

620 Petaluma Blvd N, Ste. B,
Petaluma, CA 94952

Sun, Sat

CLOSED

Mon Wed Thurs

8:30am – 6:00pm

Tuesday

3:00 – 6:00pm

Friday

8:30am-12:00pm