Stop Waking Up Achy!
How do you begin your mornings? Comfortable, energized, and ready to start the day, or achy and groggy from waking up uncomfortable? Aches and pains are always a nuisance, but they can really dampen your spirits if they plague you from the moment you wake up.
While achy mornings can be frustrating, the first step to treating them is understanding why exactly these uncomfortable sensations are occurring in the first place.
From there, it becomes easier to figure out how you can stop them using safe and drug-free methods, such as physical therapy.
Physical therapy can make your mornings easier
Whether pain is experienced in the morning, at night, or both, it is likely linked. Chronic lower back pain, for example, may jolt you awake several times per night, causing a twinge with every small movement of your body. Because of this, by the time you have to get out of bed, you may be in even more pain than when you went to bed.
Any aches and pains you may be experiencing can be alleviated with physical therapy. An experienced physical therapist can assess your symptoms in depth, determine how they relate to your sleep quality (or lack thereof), and identify the underlying causes.
This understanding allows for the creation of a physical therapy program aimed at eliminating or controlling those causes. For instance, we might determine that your back needs a firmer or softer mattress, or that your neck could benefit from a contoured cervical pillow.
Our tried-and-true physical therapy techniques can help you find relief, whether it’s strengthening your back, managing your bursitis, alleviating your plantar fasciitis, managing your osteoarthritis symptoms, or whatever else may be limiting you from living your normal life. We can also educate you on stress-relieving techniques for your jaw, as well as which sleep positions are most likely to relieve joint pain, if those are the issues you are dealing with in the mornings.
What could be causing your morning achiness?
Each area of the body has its own particular vulnerabilities to different kinds of morning pain.
Here’s a quick troubleshooting guide to help you figure out what’s going on:
- Heel pain: If taking those first steps in the morning are torture for your heels, but the pain then recedes as you walk around, you probably have a chronic inflammation of the arches called plantar fasciitis.
- Hip pain: If you experience hip pain that feels like it’s coming from within the joint and is at its worst upon awakening, suspect osteoarthritis. If the pain feels like it’s on the outside of the hip and bothers you more at night, suspect bursitis.
- Back pain: Pain can afflict any part of your back first thing in the morning. If you can barely move in the morning or never get quite comfortable at night, you may be using the wrong kind of mattress for your back.
- Neck pain: If you feel like someone tried to twist your head off during the night, you may have the wrong kind of pillow for your individual needs. Incorrect head and neck support can leave you with agonizing stiffness.
- Jaw pain: Does your jaw feel stiff and achy when you wake up in the morning? You may be grinding your teeth or clenching your jaw as you sleep, a problem known as bruxism. This habit is associated with emotional and physical stress.
If you’re living with aches and pains, we can also recommend lifestyle changes, such as a new mattress or ergonomic pillows. According to Spine Health,
“Sleeping on the wrong mattress can cause or worsen lower back pain. Lack of support from a mattress reinforces poor sleeping posture, strains muscles and does not help keep the spine in alignment, all of which contribute to low back pain.
Sleep comfort is also sacrificed if a mattress does not match one’s individual preferences. A mattress that provides both comfort and back support helps reduce low back pain, allowing the structures in the spine to really rest and rejuvenate during the night.”
Find the relief you’ve been looking for with physical therapy
Physical therapy can help you relieve morning aches and pains in a variety of ways, from overcoming the source of your chronic pain or improving your ergonomic sleeping habits.
Don’t sleepwalk through life in a haze of chronic pain; instead, wake up and schedule a consultation with our physical therapist today!
Sources:
- https://www.apta.org/PTinMotion/NewsNow/?blogid=10737418615&id=47244642134
- https://www.spine-health.com/wellness/sleep/chronic-pain-and-insomnia-breaking-cycle
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2934876/
- https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/plantar-fasciitis/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20354851
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