PRC - Back Pain - Bed Mattress for Chronic Pain
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Best Beds & Mattresses for Chronic Back Pain
If you’re struggling with chronic back pain, one of the first places you should look for back pain relief is your bed. An ideal mattress should support your spine and promote a neutral sleeping position. A neutral posture, while asleep, is important because it will alleviate disk pressure, ligament strain and muscle pain while promoting healthy blood flow and spinal nourishment. Another important consideration is sleeping position. Side sleeping and back (or supine) lying are ideal sleeping positions while sleeping on your stomach should be avoided. Side lying helps promote a neutral spine while supine, or back, lying allows for a more even distribution of pressure while sleeping. Stomach sleepers will suffer from a distortion of the natural alignment of your spine and neck. Stomach sleepers are also more prone to facial wrinkles since the head is turned to one side for the majority of the night, placing excess pressure on the face.
Depending on your preferred sleeping position, we have different recommendations on best mattresses and sleep supports for your back pain.
Side Sleepers
Because your body weight is distributed over a smaller surface area, extra pressure is placed on protruding areas, like your hip. For that reason, extra care must be placed to ensure that ideal hip alignment is achieved during sleep.
Supine/Back Sleepers
Supine sleepers have the benefit of equal distribution of weight while sleeping. However, it’s very common that back sleepers experience a slight pelvic tilt, which can contribute to back pain. Having a mattress that supports your entire lower back is extremely important for back sleepers.
Stomach Sleepers
As previously discussed, stomach sleeping should be avoided at all costs. Not only does it contribute to the misalignment of your spine and can lead to premature facial wrinkles, it is especially unhealthy for those suffering from acid reflux. Stomach sleepers can be trained to become side or back sleepers with the proper sleeping system.
Regardless of your back pain or preferred sleeping position, memory foam mattresses are widely recommended as the best mattress for back pain relief. Memory foam provides strong support for your back and neck, while also molding to the natural curvature of your spine. Memory foam is firm enough to be supportive, but soft enough that you will not experience pressure pain in any of your protruding areas (your hip bone if you are a side sleeper, your lower back and tail bone if you are a back sleeper). Just like spring mattresses, there is a huge range of memory foam mattresses on the market. It is worth spending the time to try out a range of foam densities and firmness to find the one that suits your needs and preferences. With memory foam you really do get what you pay for. Termpur-Pedic and PureFit are both trusted brands that come with the orthopedic stamp of approval.
Pillows for back pain
Only you know how you like your pillows – soft, firm, dense, light. So it is important that you find the right kind of pillow to suit your back comfort needs. Memory foam pillows offer great support, as do high-density feather pillows. Light pillows may need to be stacked up to offer you adequate support. If you are a side sleeper or a back sleeper, the most important thing to remember when looking for a pillow is to find one that keeps your spine in a neutral position and won’t crane or compact your neck.
Relax The Back in the Houston area has a great range of Tempur-Pedic mattresses and pillows, well suited to help with back pain. Come in and test any of our mattresses and find one that fits you best. Spend some time speaking to one of our back care product specialists and our staff will make sure that you’ll leave with the right back support products for your back pain.