The Healthiest Position for Sleep is On Your Side
We all know how important it is to get a good night’s rest – not only for our physical and emotional well-being, but for our mental health as well. When you haven’t gotten enough sleep, you just feel like the walking dead, don’t you?
It turns out that our sleeping position can actually make the benefits of sleep even better. HOW we sleep can greatly affect our health. For example, if you have a problem with GERD, acid reflux, or nighttime heartburn, sleeping on your right side is the worst possible thing for you. Sleeping on your left side is far better.
As an asthmatic, I’ve always found that I breathe best when I’m lying on a side. It opens the airways much better. For me, personally, sleeping on my right side seems to make it much easier to breath when I’m having trouble.
A new study takes the benefits of sleep one step further by showing that our sleep position can actually help reduce our risk of Alzheimer’s AND Parkinson’s Disease.
Not only is sleeping on your side better for your breathing and digestive system, it’s beneficial to your brain as well. Good news to have, right?!
This exciting new study (from Stony Brook University) shows that “lateral sleeping” (sleeping on your side) aids your body in removing the brain’s waste products, which naturally build up over the course of the day. Sleeping on your side allows your body to perform this task more efficiently and completely.
It’s when this waste builds up that we run into higher risks of neurological illnesses such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Our mission at Out of Bounds is to find and report any and all steps we can take that’ll help put the odds in our favor when it comes to preventing mental decline, memory loss, dementia, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s Disease. When the steps are as simple to implement as this one, we cant’ help but get a little excited.
If you’re accustomed to sleeping on your back or stomach, switching to your side may take a little getting used to. But I think it’s safe to say, the rewards are more than worth it.
~ Joi (“Joy”)