You roll out of bed, and before your feet even hit the floor, your back reminds you it’s in charge. It’s that all too familiar sharp, stabbing pain in your lower back. If you’re waking up with back pain, there’s a few things that may be playing a role:
- Surface you’re sleeping on throughout the night isn’t ideal for your body
- Improper pillow
- Incorrect body positioning during sleep
- Poor movement patterns during the day
- Structural imbalance
Waking up with lower back pain is often a signal of long-term imbalance that has been building up for a while and may now be stressing your nervous system and spine. In this article, we’ll discuss each one of these possible challenges and what you can do to eliminate your back pain when you wake up in the morning.
What Does Your Mattress or Pillow Have to Do With It?
One of the most common questions we hear is about what mattress or pillow to purchase. Here’s the deal, everyone is different. No mattress or pillow works for everyone. However, there’s some common threads across all people when it comes to sleep surface. If you’re looking to reduce low back pain, it’s best to use a firmer mattress. A soft mattress is marketed all the time online as sleeping on a cloud. Yet, that often leads to more pain and stiffness because it causes muscles and fascia to adhere together, like velcro.
The softer a surface, the more your body will sink into it and ultimately get stuck. So, if you’re sleeping on a soft mattress or pillow, in the morning, you’ll likely wake up in pain or with stiffness until you can pry the soft tissue apart. This goes for a pillow or a mattress. Click this link for one of our favorite mattress manufacturers – we receive no financial kick backs to recommend this product.
Why Your Stomach Sleeping Position Is Hurting You
There’s one position that should never be slept in, that’s your stomach. Sleeping on your belly will create two problems. First, you’ll need to turn your head to one side which causes imbalance, tension, and torque on your muscles and spine. Second, because you need to turn your head, you also need to slightly arch your lower back to allow your neck the space to rotate. This arch may lead to stiffness and pain in the low back upon waking, especially after 4-8 hours in the same position. Therefore, it’s best to adopt a side-sleeping, or back sleeping style.
How Your Lifestyle Is Causing Low Back Pain
Another thing to consider that may be contributing to your pain is your lifestyle. If you are always sitting at a desk or in a chair, that may be leading to pain. Also, if you’re working out in a HIIT format, or lifting with improper mechanics, each of these situations can build into back pain over time.
We always recommend to our practice members that they need to adopt a movement lifestyle that allows for micro movements throughout the day. The goal is to have 2-3-minutes of movement every 30-60 minutes during the day. This helps to offset the static time during the day and keep the spine and muscles moving more to reduce low back pain and other types of discomfort.
Why is Your Spine a Potential Core Problem In Your Low Back Pain?
This brings us to the most overlooked possible reason why your low back hurts when waking up, your spine. The spine has some very important features that lower the risk of pain and discomfort. For example, it should have proper cervical, thoracic, and lumbar curves to help support and act as shock absorbers for your body.
Also, each individual vertebrae should be able to move separately. When a loss of curve is found, or a vertebrae doesn’t move well, we label this a core problem. A core problem can contribute to many different things because it creates irritations on the nervous system. This irritation can play a role in low back pain, among other things. If you haven’t had your spine analyzed and tested, that’s a critical step that could cost you! Click here to schedule your initial visit at Prime Chiropractic.
How Most People Try Fix Their Lower Back Pain That Doesn’t Work
When it comes to low back pain in the morning, there are a few common strategies people try out. The most prevalent tactic is stretching. This can help, at least temporarily. Rarely will the relief last longer than a few minutes. That’s because stretching is at best a short-term palliative approach. As soon as you’re done, the body will begin returning back to its original state. Further, if you go back to your static lifestyle and make no long term changes, or, allow the core problems in your spine to remain, the pain will return. In fact, it may get worse over time. Most things in the body don’t stay the same.
What You Can Do to Fix It (That Actually Works)
If you’re tired of asking why does my lower back hurt when I wake up, we’d recommend the following strategy to improve your overall health and reduce the pain. First, assess your lifestyle and movement habits. Are you moving enough? Do you workout in a conscious way that eliminates poor movement habits? If you can answer yes, the next step would be to consider your pillow and mattress. Are they softer or firmer?
Finally, have you ever had the structure of your spine analyzed by a Neuro-Structural chiropractor, or someone similar? If yes, has it been within the past 2-years (because the spine can change dramatically in that window). The obvious next step is to have your spine tested and assessed to measure its health, if you answered “no” to either of the previous questions. To schedule a complimentary consultation at Prime Chiropractic, click here!
It depends…while occasional stiffness is normal, consistent pain may indicate deeper issues in the structure of your spine or nervous system. Furthermore, pain that comes and goes is often made worse by something you’re doing or not doing.
If the pain is getting worse, or you’re noticing very little to no change in pain pattern, it’s probably time to have an expert to take a look.
No. It may be found to be more common in older people, but it’s not normal, nor is it a sign of aging. Pain in the low back may be more common in older people because they’ve had additional time to create core problems in their spine, and their bodies typically don’t heal as quickly as someone in their 20’s. That said, there are plenty of older people who don’t suffer with low back pain after waking up.