Health Essentials - Tips for Better Sleep
Hey there, Dr. Fedich here giving you some sleep tips here. So a lot of people ask me the best way to sleep, so I'm going to go over some of my patented sleep tips here. Couple of things. What's the best way to sleep? Generally, you want to sleep on our backs or our sides. Sleep on our stomachs puts a lot of strain on the spine. Going to cause spine and neck problems. And if you're a woman, it causes wrinkles there, so that's not good. So a couple of sleeping tips. We'll show you a couple cool things here. One best position for most back problems is on your back. But a little bit of elevation to the knees. So we take a small pillow like this, just a regular throw pillow, put it underneath the knees and sleep on our back this way. That's a really good way to sleep if we have a back problem. We'd also sleep on our side. So sleep on our side. We want to get a nice good alignment. And the same thing, especially if you have a lower back problem. A small pillow right above the knees here, going to take some pressure off of your spine. So those are good tips for your lower back. As far as the neck goes, some really important stuff. If we're really having a lot of neck pain, sometimes just taking a rolled up towel or something small, roll it up in here on your neck to give yourself some support.
For our neck, what's really important is the pillow. So we're sleeping on our backs. We want something a little thinner. If we have too thick of a pillow, we're going to push our neck forward. Too thin, we're going to push it back. So it's important that it's just right. Also, if we sleep on our side, it's okay. We need to fill the gap between our ears and our shoulders here. So I have a little bit bigger shoulders than some people. I got to make sure that pillow is going to fill that gap in here. If you’re sleeping with a pillow, we recommend the Chiroflow. We have them here at the office. You adjust how much water is in there based on how much support and how big of a pillow you need. So a bigger guy like me is going to need a little more water here to fill it up and get it nice and filled and fill up that space between my neck and my shoulders. Also, if I'm sleeping on my back. It needs a little bit less water in there, so my neck is able to sit down. So those are good sleep tips. Back or side is best. We don't lie on our stomachs. It's causing back problems. Pillow underneath the knees or if it's above the knees, and we're sleeping on our side for the lower back problems. A nice supportive pillow like the Chiroflow pillow is going to help support the neck. Thicker if we're on our side to fill in that gap. A little thinner if we're sleeping on our back. So there's some nice sleeping tips for you. Also, no electronics before bed. No caffeine after 2 o’clock or so. Really important, the screens. A lot of people are on their iPads and phones, 9, 10 o'clock, and they're trying to go to sleep. That's going to keep you awake. So get rid of distractions an hour or so before bed, no caffeine in the afternoon, and try these little sleep tips to help you get a better night's sleep.
