How Bad It Is To Sleep On Your Stomach

We often hear or read that our sleeping position during at night, reflects a lot about our personality! Not sure about that, however, the position we often prefer to sleep can have a harmful effect on our sleep quality and or to ourselves.

With our busy lives, we have a lot of stuff we need to accomplish before we call it a night, most of us would be so happy to at least get any sleep at all. And let’s face it, when we finally go to bed and get ourselves ready to sleep, we have our own sleeping positions that we are comfortable with.

One of the most common sleeping positions assuming during the night the one “on your stomach” that can cause some harmful effects.

So you ask, is it bad to sleep on your stomach? And the answer is: YES.

• • One of the bad effect of sleeping on your stomach is the “Sleep apnea” which is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts. You may have sleep apnea if you snore loudly and you feel tired even after a full night’s sleep. Sleeping on your stomach could be very tough for those who have asthma too.
  • You will also feel back problems, this is because the middle of your body is where most of your weight is, this makes it difficult to maintain a neutral spine position when you are sleeping.

• If you can manage to breathe through your pillow, then you are talented, that is because sleeping on your stomach would let you turn your head on the side, which puts your head and spine out of alignment, tilting your neck. You may not notice it at once, however, having neck problems is the effect of it.
• Another result could be having “Chronic headache” or daily headache that could last at least 4 hours a day.

Of course, it not advisable for pregnant women to sleep on their stomach.

Tips on how you can avoid sleeping on your stomach:

1. Persuade yourself. Try to lie on your bed on the side position, if your not comfortable in sleeping with your body straight. Convice yourself with your mind eyes sleeping on this position and try to think something positive, like a  regenerating sleep! Often the conviction to do something positive helps to change bad habits.
2. Change your routine. If you use to read a book before sleeping (even this a habit that should be changed), try listening to some relaxing music.
3. Try sleeping sideways but this time put pillows on both sides so if ever you’ll turn back to your old position, the pillows may prevent you.

Want to have a restful night?

Find a sleeping position that suits your physiological characteristic. One way to find out is to try every sleeping position and check if one of those gave you a good long sleep.