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Does Sleep Position Affect Your Health?
Surprising truths about tossing and turning
Like most people, Andrew Wellman changes his sleep position many times during the night. And like most people, he seldom realizes it. “The only time I know if I roll on my back is my wife elbows me because I start snoring,” says Wellman, director of the Sleep Disordered Breathing Lab in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“A lot of my patients tell me they sleep on their side,” Wellman says. But when position sensors monitor them in the sleep lab, many self-professed side sleepers are on their backs up to 30% of the night, “and they didn’t know it.”
Sleep occurs in a repeated series of cycles, from light to deep to the phase called rapid eye movement (REM), when most dreams occur. We wake after each cycle, even if we don’t realize it.
“Everyone awakens throughout the night five to seven times, after each sleep cycle finishes, and then quickly returns to sleep, often with a brief movement, sometimes turning positions,” explains Shelby Harris, a psychologist and associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and the author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia.
That is, of course, if all goes well.
Pick your preference
Sleep experts agree there is no sleep posture that’s ideal for everyone. Sleep advice sites make a lot of unsupported claims: that sleeping on your right side protects your heart but causes facial wrinkles, that sleeping on your back helps clear the brain of waste products. But there is very little research to suggest that any position is better than another.
For healthy individuals, “it’s just a matter of preference,” says Alcibiades Rodriguez, medical director of the Sleep Center at NYU Langone Health and assistant professor of neurology at NYU School of Medicine. But for a person with pain or certain medical conditions, the right position can become important, Rodriguez says, especially as we age.
People with back pain may get relief by sleeping on their backs, according to the Cleveland Clinic, with a small pillow or rolled-up towel under the knees to alleviate…
