Want fewer morning aches? You might have to change the way you sleep
toggle caption Meredith Miotke for NPR
Ever wake up with a sore lower back or achy shoulders that just ruin the rest of your day? Or get up from bed and try to greet the morning, only to find your neck is too stiff to turn to the window?
Morning muscle pain along your spine is often the result of hours of improper support while sleeping, says Ellen Wermter , a nurse practitioner who runs Restorative Sleep Medicine , a sleep clinic in Virginia. One easy way to guard against it, say medical experts, is to focus on your sleep posture.
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Sleeping in an awkward position tends to create gaps between your body and your pillow or mattress, Wermter says. "Your soft tissue is going to want to sag into those gaps, and the muscles tense to make up for that" in order to protect against potential injury.
Over the course of a night, that muscle tension can cause inflam
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