Here at Foster Chiropractic Clinic, Sports & Wellness, we care about your overall health and well-being. One of the most important aspects of a healthy lifestyle is getting a good night’s sleep. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults get between 7-10 hours of sleep each night, but reports show that almost one-third of adultsare getting less that than. Living a life that is sleep deprived can be detrimental to your health, as sleep deprivation has been linked to obesity and depression, and people who aren’t getting enough sleep are known to get sick more often due to a lowered immune system. It can also lead to dangerous behavior such as drowsy driving.

We wanted to share some ways to help make sure you’re getting a good night’s sleep each and every night. We want you to have the energy to do all the activities you enjoy during the day, whether it’s being alert at work and school to working out or playing with your kids.

Practice Good Sleep Hygiene

We often associate hygiene with keeping clean, things like taking a shower and brushing our teeth on a regular basis. But the definition of hygiene is the practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease, which means good sleep habits are also included in healthy hygiene practices. Some easy steps to follow to help you get a good night’s sleep include:

· Keeping a regular time for going to bed and waking up each day, whether it’s a weeknight or a weekend. Staying up late and sleeping in on a weekend might seem like a good idea at the time, but it only makes it harder to get to sleep when you go to bed earlier on Sunday night.

· Avoid caffeine after noon.

· Keep your bedroom dark and cool to promote good sleep.

· Avoid watching TV or looking at your phone right before going to bed.

Become Pillow “Wise”

In addition to your bedtime routine, the condition of the bed you sleep also plays an important role in getting a good night’s sleep. Good posture is just as important while you’re sleeping as it is when you’re standing or sitting. If your spine isn’t aligned during the night you could suffer from neck or back pain, headaches and restless sleep caused by snoring.

A good mattress to support your spine is an important part of a good night’s sleep. What’s firm enough (but not too firm) will be different for every person, but make sure it’s not so squishy that you feel like you’re free-falling when you get into bed. Researchers also found that regardless of the price or brand of beds, people reported better sleep when sleeping on a new mattress. If your mattress is over 10 years old, it might be time to replace it.

Your pillow also plays an important role in sleep quality. Having a pillow that supports the head and neck properly is as important as a good mattress in keeping the spine properly aligned. That means your favorite pillow that you’ve spent years breaking in might not be the best pillow for your back. A pillow should adapt to the contours of your neck and provide the right support to keep the spine in a natural position. Without that support, you could suffer not only from poor sleep and restricted spine function but also tension headaches.

Chiropractic pillows are a good option for ensuring the proper support during sleep, and we recommend the Pillowise products. Made in the Netherlands, these pillows have a high-quality Memory foam center and a removable, washable cover. We custom-fit these pillows to your unique head and neck shape to ensure you a good night’s sleep on a comfortable pillow that properly supports your spine.

Come in today to see how comfortable the Pillowise products are and how they can help you get quality rest and feel better during the day.

Let’s face it, we love our smartphones. These miniature computers have pretty much taken the place of phones, maps, watches and cameras. We do much more than just talk on the phone with them. We send emails, play games and even watch movies. But did you know that all that time on your phone might be causing you pain? Of course, we’ve all heard of the drawbacks of too much time on the phone, from the social aspects that we’re isolating ourselves and not talking with people like we used to, to the scare that cellphones cause brain tumors. Thankfully this isn’t backed by science. But it is true that overuse of smartphones leads to a condition called text neck, which can lead to neck, shoulder and back pain, and even headaches or a pinched nerve.

How Text Neck Happens

Text neck comes from the simple act of looking down at your phone. You might think that seems exaggerated, since human beings have looked down at things for year. After all, you don’t often hear of people experiencing excrutiating back pain from reading. Reading and texting do put us in the same type of hunched over posture. The difference is we’re now on our phones more hours a day than people usually read or write at a desk.

According to the Washington Post, smartphone users spend about 2-4 hours per day hunched over the phone, which adds up to 700-1,100 hours per year. An adult head weighs about 10-12 pounds. When you lean forward to look at your phone, the gravitational pull adds the equivalent of about 60 extra pounds on your spine.

Not only does this extra weight lead to pain and headaches, researchers are studying whether text neck could cause permanent damage to the cervical spine in growing children, leading to lifelong neck pain.

Avoiding Text Neck

Luckily, there are some ways to avoid suffering pain from extended use of your smartphone.

Avoid hunching over the phone by practicing good posture when you’re texting or playing games. Hold the phone up, or look down with your eyes and not your entire head.
Take breaks every 20 to 30 minutes to avoid long-term hunching.
Be aware of your posture at other times too, when you’re shopping, watching TV or driving.
Exercise regularly. Activities such as yoga or Pilates help improve the strength and flexibility of your back and shoulder muscles, making them better able to handle stress.

If you feel you’re already suffering from text neck, you might consider making an appointment for a consultation with Foster Chiropractic Sports and Wellness. We can work with you to ease your pain, improve your posture and give you exercises to strengthen your neck and back.

Getting your best rest

When Your Phone is the Cause of Pain