6 Very Useful Tips On How To Sleep With Sciatica Pain

Often times, those suffering from sciatica will try to sit down or lay down to help relieve the pain. But do you know that your sleeping position can also contribute to worsening your sciatica pain?

Sleeping or resting is a good way to relieve pain but in the case of sciatica and lower back pain, the correct way of sleeping is also important.

Which is why some people even reported that their sciatica worsen when they lie down or their sciatica pain is worse at night.

In this article, I’m going to share my 6 best tips on how to sleep with sciatica pain. Keep on reading!

 

Hi there, my name is Isaac and I’m also a victim of slipped disc and its effect, sciatica.

The cause for this is due to lifting weights without a proper form. So if you’re also doing lifting weights, I really suggest that you get the best training and help to perfect your form before going heavy.

And like you, my life was never the same again. I felt pain anywhere, anytime. When I walk, when I sit and even when I sleep!

After searching far and wide on how best to improve my life (as I’ve written here, sciatica can be cured without an expensive surgery or medication) I found that these 6 tips helped me a lot when trying to sleep while subduing sciatica pain.

 

6 Great Tips On How To Sleep With Sciatica Pain:

1. Sleep On Your Side With Pillow In-Between Your Knees
2. Sleep On Your Back With Knees Propped Up
3. Sleep On Your Back With Lower Back Supported
4. Use Heat or Cold Packs
5. Warm Shower Before Sleep
6. Do Stretching and Exercises Before Sleeping

 

The first 3 are how or sleeping positions that I’ve personally tried and worked very well to reduce sciatica pain when I sleep. You’re free to use either one or combinations of them all.

The others are tips and tricks on how to reduce the flare ups before going to bed. While it might not be as important as the first 3 sleeping positions, I found that it will also have major effects on your sleep, especially after a long and tiring day.

 

I learned all of these tips and tricks from this Sciatica SOS ebook. It’s a great all-in-one ebook comprising all the information you could need to know about sciatica and how to cure it.

It has helped me a lot in my own journey and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

By the way, there’s currently a great discount on the ebook so you might want to take advantage of that (click here to check if the discount is still available).

 

1- Sleep On Your Side With Pillow In-Between Your Knees

My number one recommendation is to sleep on your side. If you notice, sleeping on the side actually is the best sleeping position as you won’t put undue stress on your lower back – hence no possibility of your spine disc to impinge on the nerve causing sciatica pain.

Instead, the weight of our body will go through the sides, and any spine deformation won’t impinge the nerve.

In addition, you can put a pillow in-between your knees to support the upper leg. It’s necessary to ensure your upper hips not fall down.

This will make sure your spine is kept straight as compared if there is no pillow in-between your knees.

I like to speak from experience, and it really does make a lot of difference to give me a better sleeping experience.

If you don’t have a suitable pillow, consider buying one of these pillow specifically made for this purpose. As it’s made from memory foam, it won’t be flatten like normal pillow and ensuring a long comfortable sleep.

ComfiLife Orthopedic Knee Pillow

 

2- Sleep On Your Back With Knees Propped Up

Sleeping on sides might not be for everyone. For some, lying on your back is the most comfortable/usual sleeping position.

But when you have lower back pain and sciatica, you’ll notice that lying on your back can actually worsen your sciatica when you’re sleeping.

Why is this happening?

As I’ve mentioned above, sleeping on your back will cause your lower spine bone to deflect downwards due to gravity. Remember, the spine has normal curvature and is not straight.

When you’re sleeping on your back the body is supported mainly on the buttocks and the upper back. The lower spine will be curved naturally.

For those with sciatica, usually your lower back is weaken due to some injury. As such, the deflection of the lower back is more and will cause pain as it impinge on the nerve around it.

Using a good (and expensive) mattress might do the trick. It will be able to fully support your lower back at all positions. But what if you don’t want to spend on an expensive mattress?

There are two ways that I’ve known to work around this problem. The first is by propping up your knees a bit by using a pillow or a platform.

When you propped up your knees, you’ll notice that your hips are rotated and this causes your lower back to straighten instead of being curved.

You can feel your lower back touching on the mattress – and providing instant relief. Try it and let me know how it worked for you!

 

3- Sleep On Your Back With Lower Back Supported

The second method to sleep on your back is by directly supporting your lower back.

What this will do is ensuring your lower back won’t bend or deflect downwards on its own which is the cause for sciatica pain during sleep.

Instead, the support given will make sure that your lower back natural curvature is maintained at all times, giving you a comfortable sleep.

An easy way to do this is by putting a towel or mattress underneath your lower back. I don’t really really recommend using a pillow since most pillow is quite thick.

You want to put just the right amount of material underneath your lower back to support its natural curvature – which means the thickness should not be too high.

Putting a thicker pillow will push your lower back higher than it should be. And in my experience, it won’t give a comfortable sleep at all!

If you don’t have such thin pillow or towel, you can buy a purpose made foam pillow for this.

There are a few of them in the market but you’ll be best served with the memory foam type that can be used for a long time.

Lumbar Support Pillow for Sleeping

 

4- Use Heat or Cold Packs

The fourth tips on how to sleep with sciatica pain is by using heat or cold packs.

If you are usually very tired after a long day work, it’s a good idea to relieve your sciatica pain before going to bed.

After all, sleeping is a way for our body to recover itself.

If you go to sleep with sciatica pain, I bet you won’t be able to get a good sleep which means that 7-8 hours will go to waste.

For immediate relief, I rely on hot and cold packs to do the work.

The cold packs will numb the muscle and nerve area while the hot packs will encourage blood flow to help healing.

I like to use both consecutively (cold > hot) to get the best effects from both packs. But if you only have one type of packs, it will still do the trick. Use the packs for 10-20 minutes each before disposing it.

You can leave it on and go to sleep (I used to do it too due to laziness LOL!) but actually the effect will go off after that so much so it’s not worth it to keep it on your body for long period.

Once you’re relieved, sleeping will be a breeze and much more enjoyable.

 

5- Warm Shower Before Sleep

Another way to defuse stresses on your body after a day’s work is by showering.

And what’s better than a warm shower to melt your stresses away?

It’s very simple to do this – just take a nice warm shower for a few minutes (or more, I’m always guilty of having a longer than needed nice warm shower!) and you’ll come out a much pain-free man/woman.

There is no argument that a warm shower can help with relieving tension, soothe tense muscles and relieving pain.

And that’s definitely someone suffering from sciatica pain will benefit from!

Sciatica pain derives from tense muscles that impinge on the nerve so a nice hot shower will help to relieve the stress off those muscles.

I like to shoot warm water streams on my back area for a good couple of minutes just to relieve the stresses on it. It’s very therepautic and powerful!

In addition, the warm shower will also help blood flow circulation to the body and muscles, just like the hot packs above.

And once your body is nicely pampered from the warm shower, you’ll find that you’re much easier to fall asleep easily =)

 

6- Do Stretching and Exercises Before Sleeping

Last but not least, you can do exercises and stretches specifically to relieve sciatica pain before sleep. No, I don’t mean those sweaty exercises of course.

In fact, doing hard exercises before going to bed can have the negative effect as you’ll be harder to fall asleep.

What I’m suggesting is to do some stretches that relieve your muscles tensions and also relieve sciatica pain.

I won’t delve deep into the exercises in this post as I’ve already written a comprehensive list of it in this article, but I’ll list a few stretches that I used to do to help relieve pain FAST before I went to sleep.

These stretches are what I usually do if I felt my lower back to be a bit tense before bedtime. And if you notice, all 3 can be done on bed – so no need to get off the bed to do it.

Piriformis stretch will help to relieve stresses off the deep piriformis muscles on your buttocks/hip area. A really great stretch that will do wonders for your back pain.

 

Back flexion stretch helps to stretch the lower back muscles – the same muscles that are overworked from all day of sitting and standing.

 

Lumbar rotation exercise is a not really popular but I swear on its effectiveness to reduce pain and stresses around the hip/buttock area. By doing this, you can relieve the tension on your hips after a long day at work. Believe it or not, a simple movement can do wonders on your lower body!

 

I learned all of these tips and tricks from this Sciatica SOS ebook. It’s a great all-in-one ebook comprising all the information you could need to know about sciatica and how to cure it.

It has helped me a lot in my own journey and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

By the way, there’s currently a great discount on the ebook so you might want to take advantage of that (click here to check if the discount is still available).

 

Conclusion

Living with sciatica pain is never an easy thing to do. It will impact your daily life, from working, to playing to even sleeping.

While there are some doctors and chiropractors that say their expensive treatments will work to cure sciatica forever, my personal experience as well as those around me concludes otherwise.

Medical treatment will work to a certain extent. Most often than not, it can come back a few years down the road to haunt you again.

This is the reason why I’m an advocate for a total change in how we live to cure sciatica pain. Only by doing so we can have a chance to lead a pain free life.

 

I hope this article on how to sleep with sciatica pain will help you in getting a great sleep tonight. Try these out and let me know how it works ya!

Do let me know in the comments section if you have any questions =)

Till we meet again.

Cheers!
Isaac.