Insight by Dr. Nicole Mastando

Pain when you wake up?

Posted: August 20, 2013
By: Dr Nicole Mastando

Many patients come to me with pain that occurs when they wake up.  They'll leave my office pain-free, go about their day and slep without a single symptom; until they get out out of bed.  Here is what you need to know.

 

Reasons for waking with pain:

 

1) The most obvious reason is that your bed sags.  How to determine if your bed sags?  Put a broom stick across your mattress and if there is an inch or more of space between the stick and the bed, your need to replace the matress or turn it over.  Some mattresses are not made to be flipped.  If you have one of those, then the mattress eeds to be replaced.  How does a new mattress sag?  First, I have found (from discussing this with patients for 10 years) that the most common sagging bed is a pillow top.  This includes my first pilow top that I had for less than 3 years before it sagged.  It was purchased for $1500 and I think that qualifies as "not cheap."  I've also been told by manufacturers that folding the mattress during delivery to get it through doorways internally damages it and causes premature sagging.

 

2) Stomach sleeping can cause many types of pain including sciatica, neck and low back pain.  Stomach sleeping can even cause headaches.  How?  Sleeping on your stomach twists the spine and if that isn't bad enough, there is added twisting from using a pillow to tilt the head.  This causes spinal injury and even if the pain is gone, the misalignments it causes need to be removed by a spinal adjustment.

3) The pillow you are using is either too high or too low.  This not only encourages stomach sleeping, but it kinks the neck and upper back.  Niether the muscles nor the spine were designed to be torqued and, therefore, pain, spasms and inflammation occur.

If you have further questions about waking up with pain, please call me directly at 781-834-7300.  I recommend a spinal check up to remove your misalignments and reviewing with you your specific reasons for pain.