(Video Transcript)
Hey guys Dr. Grady here wanting to encourage you to not sleep on your stomach and here are some reasons why. So, first of all, there's only one benefit that I could really think of to sleeping on your stomach and that's to reduce snoring, but that one benefit
certainly doesn't outweigh the many negatives of stomach sleeping which can then lead to neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, and other joint pain. So just don't do it. Sleeping on your stomach takes the spine out of its neutral position since most of your body weight is concentrated in the midsection, when you lie on your stomach you exert more pressure on the bed. Extra pressure causes mattress sinkage beneath your abdomen,
triggering the spine out of its neutral position. When we place the spine into that position it can place a strain on those joints of the spine also increasing the surrounding muscles and then when you wake up you're usually stiff and that leads to pain throughout the day.
Now even more common is for people to experience neck pain from sleeping in
this position. Unless you figured out some way to breathe through your pillow while sleeping on your stomach chances are your head is turned to the side that puts your head and spine out of alignment again and it stretches some muscles while shortening others and often you wake up with that feeling of a kink in your neck. Now you might not notice this damage from just one episode of sleeping on your stomach but over time it will develop into neck problems.
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