Why do you have back and neck aches for days if you “sleep wrong” one night?
In: Biology
So I learnt during my first year of massage therapy that when you “sleep wrong” you can actually over stretch one set of muscles while tightening the opposite set. Especially if it’s your neck area as there is a huge number of muscles including, erector spina group, traps, scalenes (of which you have ), levator scapula, SCM (cant member how to spell the full muscle) and a few other smaller muscles. Most of these either span your most of your back, aid in stabilizing your head, and or share origins/insertions with other muscles. And since alot of them are key for keeping your trunk and neck stable as well as physical movement if you cant relax them properly after you strech/tense them you will experience alot of discomfort over x amount of days. Since I sleep wrong all the time I love hands on days at school
A somewhat different approach to answering this question:
Humans need to move frequently. We need to be able to stretch out to our fullest and also roll into a ball/curl up. If we stay extremely still or cannot move enough for too long, we start to cause damage to our bodies.
Also, if we cannot stretch out properly we can damage our bodies. One form of torture involves putting someone in a cage that doesn’t allow them to completely stretch out. Just two weeks confined like this can cause permanent damage. This was used on Fulan Gung (however it’s spelt) practitioners to terrible effect, it you feel like looking into it further.
This isn’t eli5 but a cure:
Gua Sha is the BEST massage and only thing that helps with my bad neck, shoulder and back. yoga helps too but nothing is like Gua Sha. It’s basically someome scraping your head, neck, and back for myofascial release.
I’m no doctor, but i do have somewhat of a background in biomechanics and some personal experience that could offer a solution. Take a steaming HOT bath for 10-15 min. And when i say hot, i mean borderline unbearable. Your arms and legs dont have to be submerged but make sure the majority of your chest is. The hot water will raise your body temperature and increases bloodflow and loosens tighten muscles. Have a cold glass of water within reach and get out of the bath really slow. Standing too fast can make you pass out. Feel free to do some stretching once you get out if you still have a sweat.
As Steven Wright once told:
“Did you sleep well?”
“No… I made a few mistakes.”
I’m in decent shape and I’m still young, only 26. I slept weird one night and woke up with a stiff neck, no pain. The next day was a different story. I couldn’t turn my head at all without being bright to my knees. That lasted for 3 weeks and was hell. I still don’t know what happened to me.
This book addresses the “why,” but more important it’s very good for “how” to ease the pain and stop it from coming back. Someone gave it to me decades ago and it really helped me. I’ve been recommending it since.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that you can get really stiff and sore after a long car or plane ride, especially if you fall asleep during it. It’s a response to being immobilized. If you can move around, it can prevent the backache from happening. The same can occur if your bed is too soft and comfortable. It needs to be firm enough that you feel like changing positions every once in a while.
Constant phone usage will be the death of us all. So many neck problems. It might look idiotic but try to hold your phone up to eye level rather than bending your neck when endlessly scrolling reddit.
For the same reason wrecking your tv takes seconds, but putting it back together takes a really long time.
Destruction doesn’t care for what is ruined and how, things being put together do care about it and it takes more care and time.
Firstly, generally these are small muscle strains or inflamed nerves. Tight, dense muscles from life are vulnerable to strain which takes a couple days to heal and will be sharp and weak in the meantime.
Also, there are numerous small muscles in your neck and those are made of groups of smaller subsets of muscle fibers called fascicles. Each fascicle is innervated by nerves that tell them to fire.
When you sleep, you try to perform the actions of your dreams. These actions are MOSTLY inhibited. If your head is turned or flexed or in any position that may stretch or shorten a compromised muscle (tight from years of overwork/poor posture/ lack of exercise), it’s possible that a dream twitch could cause that muscle or fascicle to strain.
Additionally, as other people have mentioned, there could be a whole host of nerve interactions thar hurt due to inflammation. Nerves are complex and their interactions with other tissues is many and varied, so I tend to focus mostly on the muscle strain aspect of stiff necks. Luckily the treatment is the same, rest and ibuprofen.
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