Doctors Are Sharing The Surprising Pros And Cons Of Propping Up Your Head To Sleep

You mightiness person heard that propping your caput up astatine nighttime tin help you sleep, whether you’re dealing with acerb reflux oregon snoring. However, you whitethorn person besides noticed that the adjacent day, your neck hurts. What gives?

As sleepless nights and achy mornings volition archer you, propping your caput up astatine nighttime tin beryllium some adjuvant and unhelpful. Sometimes, it’s the reply to your sleeping woes ― and different times, it’s the origin of them.

How Propping Up Your Head At Night Can Help

One of the “clearest situations” successful which elevating the precocious assemblage tin assistance is erstwhile idiosyncratic has gastroesophageal reflux illness (GERD), said Dr. Likhita Shaik, a slumber medicine specializer and neurologist astatine University of Iowa Health Care. Gravity keeps your tummy contents from flowing backmost into the esophagus.

“Acid reflux is 1 of the much communal things that intrudes connected sleep, and it doesn’t ever amusement up arsenic classical heartburn,” noted Dr. Sam A. Kashani, a board-certified slumber medicine doc and subordinate of Project Sleep’s advisory board. “Reflux tin contiguous with sore throat, cough, greeting nausea and successful immoderate cases, it tin trigger sleep-related laryngospasm, a abrupt closure of vocal cords that causes a idiosyncratic to aftermath up choking.” The second tin beryllium mistaken for an apnea-related gasp, helium continued, successful which immoderate patients are misdirected toward a slumber apnea workup.

Acid reflux isn’t the lone cause; congestion-related reasons are besides connected the list. More specifically, Shaik listed nasal congestion, allergic rhinitis and post-nasal drip.

Propping your caput up provides different benefits, too. According to Dr. Phyllis Zee, the Chief of Sleep Medicine astatine Northwestern Medicine, it “can assistance with snoring and breathing,” which is “particularly applicable for radical with breathing disorders, specified arsenic sleep apnea, asthma, arsenic good arsenic radical with bosom conditions, specified arsenic bosom failure.”

Dr. Gregory Breen, a pulmonologist and slumber medicine specializer astatine Inspira Health, explained however it helps radical with obstructive slumber apnea (OSA) successful particular.

“For immoderate people, gradually elevating the precocious assemblage from the mid-back done the caput tin assistance support the airway much open,” helium said. “Elevation uses gravity to trim the inclination of the tissues surrounding the airway to autumn backward and constrictive it during sleep.”

Just beryllium alert that the elevation tin origin a mendacious consciousness of improvement. You mightiness snore less, Kashani said, but the apnea is inactive there, causing drops successful oxygen levels.

Additionally, enactment that this doesn’t mean you should commencement stacking pillows underneath your head. It’s besides not a substitute for OSA treatments, specified arsenic a CPAP. (We’ll explicate that much later.)

When Doctors Warn Against Propping Your Head For Sleep

Elevating your caput tin besides origin problems, successful which there’s 1 main trap radical autumn into. “The biggest contented is doing it with pillows alternatively of a existent incline,” Kashani said. “It’s not elevation itself that causes harm — it’s elevating the incorrect way.” The symptom that tin origin whitethorn marque you deliberation elevation is inherently atrocious erstwhile it tin really relieve wellness symptoms.

Shaik besides warned against utilizing excessively galore pillows, saying it forces your cervix into a flexed presumption and elevates your caput excessively steeply. That tin origin cervix pain, enarthrosis pain, musculus strain, morning headaches, stiffness, numbness, tingling, disturbed slumber and worsened breathing problems.

If that’s not enough, Breen added that the cervix strain tin constrictive the airway, and Zee added that the incorrect presumption tin origin spine and debased backmost strain. “Finding a comfy equilibrium betwixt breathing and GERD enactment and debased backmost strain is important and highly depends connected the individual, arsenic good arsenic the benignant of caput enactment and mattress,” Zee said.

The Safest Way To Prop Your Head Up At Night

So, you request to prop your caput up but aren’t definite however to bash it the “right” way. “The safest attack is mostly to elevate the precocious assemblage alternatively than simply stacking pillows nether the head,” Shaik said.

For radical with GERD, she recommended raising the caput astir 6 to 8 inches oregon utilizing a wedge pillow, keeping the cervix successful a neutral position. “It should not beryllium bent guardant with the chin toward the thorax oregon tilted backward,” Breen explained. “There besides should not beryllium a spread betwixt the precocious back, shoulders and caput that leaves the cervix unsupported.”

Zee encouraged reasoning successful presumption of the angle. “An incline of 10 to 30 degrees is typical, but 20 to 25 is simply a bully start,” she said. Kashani said risers oregon blocks nether the bedposts, arsenic good arsenic adjustable beds with a pre-set snore mounting that elevate the caput of the bed, are different harmless options.

The takeaway present is that you request to prop up your precocious assemblage (not conscionable your head!) astatine nighttime if you person 1 of the aesculapian conditions listed above. “I would not routinely urge sleeping propped up simply to amended slumber successful idiosyncratic who does not person a aesculapian crushed for it,” Shaik clarified. “I would besides debar oregon reassess elevation if it causes cervix oregon backmost pain, headaches, numbness, trouble breathing oregon important discomfort.”

She emphasized that caller oregon worsened shortness of enactment requires much attraction than a wedge. It tin awesome an underlying cardiopulmonary information that necessitates aesculapian evaluation. Even if you person 1 of those conditions mentioned earlier, adjusting your caput isn’t the lone measurement to take.

“Propping the caput up is conscionable 1 mode to alteration the symptoms, adjunctive therapy, but not the solution to these conditions, which request to beryllium treated nether the attraction of a wellness attraction professional,” Zee said. Remember, you tin often payment from a chat with your healthcare provider, adjacent earlier making “simple” at-home changes. Every person’s assemblage is different, and you privation to marque definite you’re doing what’s champion for yours.

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected HuffPost.