Why do you have back and neck aches for days if you “sleep wrong” one night?
In: Biology
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.
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.
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