Sleeping on your stomach can help with lumbar disc herniation

If you suffer from lumbar disc herniation, you will obviously feel discomfort in your waist. For patients in the acute stage of lumbar disc herniation, conservative treatment can actually be adopted. Conservative treatment generally means that patients use medication to relieve the discomfort caused by the disease. The patient is also required to rest in bed. So, is sleeping on your stomach good for lumbar disc herniation?

The most obvious symptom of lumbar disc herniation is low back pain, which has a great impact on people's sleep. Many people find that if they sleep on their stomachs at night, the pain seems to be relieved. So is it really possible to sleep on your stomachs? Lao Zong Yi Health Online recommends not to sleep on your stomach, because when patients sleep on their stomachs, their chests will be compressed, and the thoracic lordosis will increase, which is more likely to cause more discomfort.

So how should we sleep? In addition to sleeping on your stomach, other common sleeping positions include sleeping on your back and sleeping on your side .

If the patient is accustomed to sleeping on his back, it is important to choose a suitable bed that allows their limbs to stretch naturally and does not cause too much impact on the curvature of the spine. If the patient is accustomed to lying on his side, then either lying on the left or the right side is fine.

The best sleeping position is lying on your back. When the patient lies on his back, he can put a soft pillow under his feet and place his feet naturally on it. In this way, the hips and knees can be bent, so that the muscles of the whole body can be relaxed, the pressure on the lumbar intervertebral disc will be reduced, and the condition of posterior disc baldness will be alleviated to the greatest extent. Sleeping like this can also reduce and relax the tension of the iliopsoas muscle and sciatic nerve, so lying on your back with your feet under a pillow is the best sleeping position.

Causes

1. Degenerative changes of the lumbar intervertebral disc are the basic factors

The degeneration of the nucleus pulposus is mainly manifested by a decrease in water content, and may cause small-scale pathological changes such as vertebral instability and loosening due to water loss; the degeneration of the annulus fibrosus is mainly manifested by a decrease in toughness.

2. Injury

Long-term and repeated external forces cause minor damage and aggravate the degree of degeneration.

3. Weakness of the intervertebral disc’s own anatomical factors

After adulthood, the intervertebral discs gradually lack blood circulation and have poor repair ability. On the basis of the above factors, some inducing factors that may cause a sudden increase in the pressure on the intervertebral disc may cause the less elastic nucleus pulposus to pass through the annulus fibrosus that has become less tough, causing nucleus pulposus herniation.

4. Genetic factors

There are reports of familial incidence of lumbar disc herniation.

5. Congenital abnormalities of lumbar sacrum

Including lumbar sacralization, sacral lumbarization, hemivertebra deformity, facet joint deformity and articular process asymmetry. The above factors can change the stress on the lower lumbar spine, resulting in increased intra-disc pressure and susceptibility to degeneration and injury.

6. Predisposing factors

On the basis of intervertebral disc degeneration, certain factors that can induce a sudden increase in intervertebral space pressure can cause nucleus pulposus herniation. Common inducing factors include increased abdominal pressure, incorrect waist posture, sudden weight bearing, pregnancy, cold and moisture.