Back Pain After Sleeping? It’s Not Just Your Mattress

f your back hurts most when you wake up, your mattress probably isn’t the real problem.

Morning back pain is one of the most common patterns chiropractors see. Many people replace beds, pillows, and sleep positions, yet the stiffness returns every day. That’s because sleep doesn’t usually cause the issue — it reveals it.

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains why back pain shows up after sleeping, what morning stiffness actually means, and what chiropractors look for when evaluating recurring back pain patterns. You’ll also learn why movement helps quickly but doesn’t solve the underlying problem.

If your back loosens up after a shower or walking but comes back the next morning, this episode will help you understand what’s really happening.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Ask the Chiropractor. Thanks for tuning in today. I get asked lots of questions about sleep. I wake up, I'm in pain. I wake up, I'm. When I woke up this morning, my back was wrong. I felt really good until I woke up in the morning. Back pain after sleeping. Is it just your mattress?, I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois, and people ask me all the time, what kind of mattress and stuff should I buy? What kind of mattress should I be looking at? What's going on in my sleep posture? Why am I always having back pain after sleeping?, Why isn't my morning back always stiffness? And basically it was why does my back bothering me? Why does my back hurt more in the morning? So let's talk about this a little bit. The most common reactions to this is, Hey, what kind of new mattress do I need to buy? Hey, do I need a new pillow? What is the most perfect sleeping position that'll help me wake up and never have back pain again?, Morning back pain is a clue that your body isn't tolerating stillness more than you have a wrong bed, meaning that. There's more than just the bed you're sleeping on. I always tell people, if you wanna have a fun experiment, if you think your mattress is so bad, go outta town and stay at a hotel somewhere, sleep on a different bed, and tell 'because if it still happens. Majority of the time it will because it's not the bed, it's you. because you see during the day, you're moving around, you're switching positions all the time. You're standing, you're sitting, you're walking, , you're running. All different positions. You don't just stay frozen in one position at night. You don't move, right? You stay still. You're idle and your joints start to stiffen up. Fluid pressure inside of your spaces start to build up. You know when you wake up and you get a big stretch, you hear all that popping and stuff like that. That's pressure building up. When we do a chiropractic adjustment, you hear a noise. That noise is called cavitation. Cavitation is a fluid building up pressure inside your joints from a lack of mobility. When we do the chiropractic adjustment, we find that when you're not moving properly and we restore the motion, and then the fluids equalized and you hear a popping sound, it's exact same principles that would be. And you open a can of soda pop, it's fluid under pressure being released. So at night you're not moving. The joints stiffen, your fluid pressures changes, and the nerves just become more sensitive when you sleep. So sleeping doesn't create the problbecause, it reveals it. So it reveals that there's something bigger going on in your spine than just the way you're sleeping. If it was that easy, we would just, design the perfect mattress by now, right? We would design the perfect pillow. By now, it'd already be out. There's, can you imagine how much money you could make if you could develop the perfect mattress and the perfect pillow for everyone to sleep in? That person would be a millionaire. But the reason it doesn't exist and the reason why people can't discover that, because it's the person, not the mattress or the. Or the bed. Yeah, there's better mattresses and better pillows, but the majority of the time it's the person not at the actual, mattress or what's going on. So we gotta get you moving more at night. Right? I always tease, watch an action movie before you go to bed. Maybe you're running place, but we know that doesn't work. So what? What do we have to do? Usually when I notice a problbecause, people will come in and they'll tell me it's hard to stand up straight when they first wake up. They have to warm thbecauseselves up to get straight. They usually feel better after a shower going for a little bit of a walk around the house. Maybe it gets worse again after they sit down. If I sit down for a little bit, I go to get up, I feel it again, and it's the same pain every morning. I feel the same thing all the time. So what's going on here is that we got a couple issues happening. One at night, , you stiffen up to get tight., I talk a lot about athletes because I take care of the Rockford Ice Hogs here in town, the hockey team. And a lot of people are surprised to see that they spend more time stretching after the game than they do before the game. because when you go, go, go, go, like they do with the hockey, your body starts producing the energy that it needs to keep you moving the muscles going. And when you stop without doing a proper cool down or stretch, these chbecauseicals continue to get made and they build up and they make your joints stiff and sore in the morning. So a lot of people are surprised when I tell 'because the ice hogs, hockey teams spend more time stretching after the game than they do before the game. It's part of a cool down before they go. So if your joints are. Misaligned. You have a subluxation and some of your musculature is working overtime to protect you from creating bigger damage, more issues, and then you lay on that muscle the wrong way. It's gonna tighten up and get. More sore. Not even the wrong way. I shouldn't have said the wrong way, just laying down. Now that muscle's been working overtime. Now it just came to a stop and now it has a chance to get stiff, sore and achy. Why do you feel better after a shower? The moist heat goes in there, breaks that muscle up. I want you to understand that a muscle that's inflamed from overworking. Let me try to break this down. If your neck, misaligns certain musculature work overtime to protect your neck, so you can't cause more damage, but now they're working overtime all the time, not only are they protecting you from creating further damage, but at the same token, they're trying to do their normal job and the job of other muscles that aren't doing their job anymore because you're misaligned. So these muscles are working really hard, and the more you push it, the more you challenge it, the more stress you give it, the more inflamed it gets. And the more inflamed it gets, the more sticky it gets. Inflamed tissue gets real sticky. It starts making adhesions. Sometimes you might have somebody tell you they have a knot in their muscle. That's the adhesion from always being inflamed. And when you stop moving, that's when it's all stiffens up and tightens. Now it finally has a chance of like really lock up and solidify, and it's doing it to, because it's overworked, it's overtired. What's the right pillow you could sleep on to make that go away?, It doesn't, like you can't make it go away because it's all inflamed and irritated for what you did all day. It doesn't matter the pillow you sleep on, it matters the fact that it's been irritated all day from things you do all day and you take a hot shower, it feels better because the moist heat goes in there and it breaks that tissue down a little bit and helps break some of those adhesions and allows you to move again. But as soon as you sit down and you stop moving, I mention it gets worse after you sit again. It starts to tighten up again, and then it starts to go back to the sleep mode again. So you have to stand up straight and get loosened up before that gets going again. This isn't like permanent tissue damage, but it's just reoccurring tissue damage over and over again with the inflammation now. Why do mattresses and pillows really fix these things? because it's not a mattress thing. The mattress you slept down last night didn't make you walk around all day long pushing your neck or the lower back issues. If your lower back has the same thing, let's say one hip's higher than the other hip because you have a misalignment, your lower back, all the other muscles around there will work extra hard to lock down two of those vertebraes to make sure you don't damage 'because no more. Now these muscles are working over time again to stabilize the misalignment, to keep you from bending and twisting the wrong way. And at the same time, they're still trying to do their normal job, plus they're compensating for the fact that the other muscles aren't doing their job. I'll give you an example. If your L one L two gets misaligned, it's gonna pull out, they call the psoas muscle, P-S-O-A-S, the psoas muscle's, a hip flexor. It helps you lift your leg. But if your lumbar rotates to the left or to the right, it's gonna make one of these stretch and elongate the other one normal. So now we've got one stretch of the elongated and one normal. As you try to walk, because the hip flexor judges how far you can take your stride. If one of 'because is already working hard and it's already inflamed, it's already tight, that step's gonna get shorter. So the other lay's gonna have to walk extra far. So now you've got a short step and a larger step trying to compensate the difference. And you go, go, go, go all day. Then at the end of the day, you go to bed, you lay down. Now typically there's gonna be one side that's more comfortable than the other because one side's gonna expose that hip being stretched. The other side's not. So we, you come in, you tell me I feel good when I lay on my left side, but not my right side. My right side makes it worse. That gives me a huge clue how to adjust you. It's also showing me that it's that hip muscle that's tight. It's not the mattress. It doesn't matter what bed we put you on. You would still have this pulling from walking all day. So we do the chiropractic correction and we get rid of that misalignment. Now that muscle's not working over time. So people ask me, should I put a pillow between my knees? And that's better, right? That's a better way to sleep, not because, it's a better sleep posture, but because you got less stress on your hip. When you sleep like that, you follow me? It doesn't fix a lower back, but it. It rbecauseoves a stressor on a lower back that's already misaligned. If that misalignment wasn't there, the pillow between your knees wouldn't be as important, but if the misalignment's there, then that's the way you can help me, not irritated it after I adjust you to go back home and go to bed. So the things that we look for is what's misaligned. We look for the segmental, joint restriction going vertebrae? Vertebrae. Trying to figure out which ones are limited, the range of motion that's being protected. We look to see how your hips and your tailbone and your secret are misaligned. A lot of times you come in here and you ask me, you have a short leg or a long leg, and that's what I'm measuring. That's what I'm looking for. Nerve sensitivity. Again, what's going on with your, your gate, your walk, your, this is hot, this is inflamed, this is sore, this is achy. That all gives me clues as some of the misalignments are. And then, as soon as I stop moving, I go to get up, I'm always in pain. That tells me the severity of what's going on. Again, not the kind of mattress you own, not the kind, it's time to buy a new mattress. Not, it's time to get a new pillow. It's the fact that your spine's that misaligned, again, why do people get relief from this? Other clues they get is when they're doing some little stretching, they're doing some hot showers and walking, breaking up some of those tissues, restoring some of the motion, getting some of the joints lubricated again. So who am I reaching out to in this podcast? Who am I trying to find? It's that person that wake up every morning and that they're in pain. It takes 'because 10 to 20 minutes to get going every morning, and this happens every morning. Or maybe you've already tried three or four mattresses. Maybe it's not your mattress, maybe it's you. So if you've been suffering through this and you've been having these issues, it's time to go see a chiropractor. A chiropractor is a non-medical approach that's able to prevent worsening episodes, and we're also able to find the mechanical issue that's causing your spine not to move the way it's supposed to, and we're able to make that correction. Now, do a lot of medical doctors tell you to come see us and would recommend us? No. Why? We're not part of that systbecause where , the, they call us a alternative healthcare. I don't know how alternate we are, but they call us a alternative healthcare. So medical doctors, physical therapists, and all of thbecause are part of the main street healthcare systbecause, but we're not, they are not trained or educated on what we. Therefore, if you ask thbecause, should I see a chiropractor? For this, you rarely get a reliable answer. Rbecausebecauseber, the only person to ask about whether you should or should not get chiropractic care is a chiropractor. If you want more information, go to my website. Wherever you're watching or listening to this, there'll be links or you can go to the national association chiropractic.org. chiropractic.org and you can find a lot more there. Thank you for tuning in. We appreciate you tuning in and listen to our podcast, next week. I've already got my question. What are some of the early signs that my back's about to go out? Are there any indicators that might. Tell me that I need to prepare for something or slow down. So come back next week, listen to the next week, ask the chiropractor, and if you have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, go ahead and leave a comment or a post after this and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. And rbecausebecauseber, the only person that's qualified to answer questions about chiropractic care will be a chiropractor. Just like I would never ask my optometrist questions about my teeth, I would ask my dentist. Thank you.