Why Sleeping on Your Stomach Might Not Be the Best Choice

Free fall sleeper, Stomach sleep or whatever name you call yourself with respect to the position at which you go to bed, one thing is certain, whenever you want to go to bed, you sleep on your front and not your back. You know, that position can be very comfortable, allow you to access that sweet dream and maybe just very nice as you would feel the bed from the front. Although, we are likely to change positions while we are sleeping, there are some people that are comfortable with sleeping on their front but there is a reason why this sleep position is not the best, and that is the Spine.

We only have one spine, compare to some organs in our body that are double thereby helping to keep the organs function when one goes bad, the spine is a complete single. The spine is responsible for keeping us upright and it is divided into the Cervical (top region), Thoracic (Chest region), and thee Lumbar region (bottom part). The bones of the spine are held together by cartilaginous substances known as discs, and the spine is covered with ligaments which connects bone to bones, and then tendons which are responsible for holding muscles to bones. When we mention the spine, we cannot leave the fact that they have the presence of nerves which helps them get and send signals.

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Back to our lying position. You see, lying on our front side puts our spine in a bad position as it puts immerse pressure on it and although the spine is at the top when we are lying, and the stomach is the one facing the ground, the pressure is coming from the bottom. This becomes worse when you are lying on a soft bed, because the back is bending when you sleep on your stomach putting a lot of pressure on the discs of the spine.

While the thoracic vertebrae is the middle of the spine, the lumber vertebrae is the middle of the entire body and so, pressure would tell in that region as it has to balance us on the upper part of the body as it has to stabilize us at the lower part of the body.

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When lying on our stomach, one place we wouldn't face our head to in directly to the bed or pillow because we would not be able to breath and so this means we have to turn our neck to either the right or the left and I love the left so well, because it face the wall and I can see my curtain but then it twists the neck, putting pressure on the upper part of the spine which is the cervical region and when we wake, you begin to feel those neck pain that looks like our neck got stiff on one side and it is difficult to turn to the other. It becomes worse when you are sleeping on a pillow because not only is the neck twisted, the spine is also lifted.

You then begin to wonder why people like myself would prefer laying on my stomach to my friend who lay on his back but at the end, it is just preference. Front, back, side, or any other position, it is just based on preferences that we pick this position and there are no enough scientific research to support this. So this brings the question "which is the best way to sleep when protecting your spine?" According to research, the best way to sleep and protect your spine is to lay sideways with the knee up.

Post Reference

^{https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279468/
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https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleeping-positions/sleeping-on-stomach
https://teachmeanatomy.info/back/bones/vertebral-column/
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https://jdhealthcare.com.au/the-different-types-of-patient-positioning/
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https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=4460}