Tips to Get a Better Night’s Sleep
Hello everybody Dr. James Fedich, Clinic Director at Village Family Clinic in Hackettstown, NJ. If you don't know we are we're in Hackensack New Jersey and we are one of the area's largest health care providers. We havehave multiple chiropractors, physical therapists, acupuncturists, nutritionists, and medical pain management over here for all your healthcare needs.
In this video we're talking about sleeping. We see a lot of patients in the clinic with problems sleeping so we're gonna give you some sleep tips, tips to get you to sleep better, and some general tips about sleep positioning.
There's a lot of people with insomnia which means you're not getting enough sleep. There's a couple different problems. It's really kind of two major problems when we're having trouble falling asleep and/or we're having trouble staying asleep. So there's different problems in there this is a complex issue.
The number one reason people do not sleep well is actually muscle aches and pain. So you're waking up because your back hurts your neck hurts you're rolling on your shoulder. It is physical problems that is actually the number one reason why we're not getting good night's sleep. So if you have a physical problem, back pain, neck pain,headaches, shoulder problems, or anything like that give us a call at (908) 813-8200 and we'll fix that up for you.
There's some other good tips I'd like to give you today. Let’s talk general sleep problems versus a physical problem. Number one is electronics. We're all into iPhones iPads and computers. We had a guy in recently with trouble sleeping. It turns out he leaves his I pad on and it alerts when he's getting email alerts all night and of course it's waking him up multiple times. So rule number one in getting a good night's sleep is turning electronics off an hour before bedtime. Turn phones off, iPads off, no TVs in the room an hour before bedtime. All that light, it's gets complicated, but the light stimulating hormones in the brain and keeps you awake. The body thinks there's some light out there and wants to be awakened.
Rule number two. We don't want to eat or drink anything in our before bed as well. So if you were eating this midnight snack or drinking a big glass of water, then you got to get up and go to the bathroom. So it's no food or drinking at bedtime.
Your room environment is very important so a couple things in the general room for you to think about. A lot of us are sleeping way too warm whether it's in the summer or winter. Most of you are sleeping too warm. If you set sleep temperatures at 72 or 70, then you're under the blankets. You're gonna be 75 degrees in there as your body heat is all trapped in there. There's a lot of different strategies but the best thing for most is to keep the room a little bit cooler enough that you don’t need a thick blanket. Myself, we use something called the chill pad at home where it circulates water underneath you and it helps regulate your body temperature.
Next we’ll discuss sleep positions. A lot of people don't know how to sleep. Number one we never want to sleep on our stomach. There's just no good way to sleep on your stomach. It's gonna put strain on the neck and it's hard to breathe properly. For women out there they say gives you wrinkles quicker if you sleep on your stomach. So that's why I get my women patients to sleep on their back or sides. I found a change that happens to work. Get all those long body pillows at Target or some store like that. Just get one of those big long and inexpensive pillows and start putting it underneath you. Start gently turning off your stomach toward your side or back, either is okay, whatever it's better for you.
I know a lot of people have trouble snoring. If you're snoring a lot and your partner says you kind of stop breathing in the night you could have something called sleep apnea where you're waking up continually and which is actually a very serious medical problem. So if you have a severe snoring and your partner says that you're kind of not breathing in middle of night you want to get a sleep study done to evaluate you for sleep apnea.
One thing we recommend is one good pillow. So a normal pillow you are going to find at the stores are probably not going to give you enough support. One of the pillows that we have here is this water-based pillow. Basically what you do is you fill up water level based on how big you are. So you use just one pillow. A nice thing about the water pillow is that it's nice and heavy, doesn't slide around. So we use these at the clinic.
So, no food or drinking before bedtime, no electronics at night before bedtime, try to go to bed a little earlier, No electronics, no food, nothing else an hour before bed. Once in a nice calming relaxing bedroom, get the temperature down. Most of us are sleeping way too warm. Get it to 72 degrees in there and sleep a little cooler. Sleep positions, be on our back or a side. Use one good pillow. If you have a bad lower back, a sleep pill is ok and use a pillow or two underneath the knees to elevate them so that you can take some pressure off the spine. Come on in and we can delve into this a little bit more. Hopefully this helped you out a little bit. Check out our website hackettstownfamilyclinic.com or give us a call.
