“Rest is an important part of our day to day, and we should spend between seven or eight hours to make it effective.”
We generally associate it when we go to sleep, although we must bear in mind that sleeping is not the same as resting: a bad posture at night can ruin our rest making us wake up more tired and in a bad mood.
During sleep, our body continues to work and performs functions of great importance: hormonal regulation, consolidation of short-term memory. Our consciousness may be resting, but our body is in charge of its recovery and the optimal preparation for the following day. This is why it is so important to rest effectively.
The posture we adopt at bedtime will be decisive for the quality of our rest: maintaining a suitable position in which our back is not forced will make us wake up the next day with the feeling of having recovered from the previous day and ready to eat us the day. And you, in which position do you sleep?
The optimal posture: face up or sideways
If you are looking to rest effectively, then try to stay on your back at night. In this way our spine maintains its natural curvature, counting of course that we sleep on a good mattress that does not deform, and our rest will be of higher quality. To get the most out of this posture, we should sleep with a pillow that allows us to maintain the curve of our neck: not too high to adopt a hyperzygotic posture (with the chin almost touching our chest), or too soft for the head does not receive support.
The second best option is to sleep on your side in the fetal position, that is, with your legs bent. This posture is highly recommended for those who suffer pain in the lower back, since the pressure between the vertebrae disappears, although the alignment of the spine is not optimal. To avoid shrinking one leg and stretching the other, since the hip loses its alignment.
If we sleep on our backs we will put the pillow under our knees, something that very few people do but it is really comfortable, and if we do it on our side we will put it between the two legs, basically, to prevent one leg from dropping the weight on the other, causing pain. Also, this way the hip is more aligned and the posture is more correct (pregnant women, for example, see the sky open when they discover the power of that pillow between the legs).
The posture to avoid: sleeping on your stomach
Sleeping on your stomach is the option that we should avoid when going to bed: when we place ourselves on our stomach, the spine is completely misaligned, putting great pressure on the vertebrae in the lower back. In addition, this posture requires that our neck is heavily tilted when resting on the pillow, which can create cervical tension. If we also stretch one leg but flex the other we will be isolaterally opening the hip (only on one side, while the other remains looking down), something that does not benefit us for proper rest.
Take care and change your mattresses and pillows
The care of mattresses and pillows is important for our rest. We must remember to turn and flip the mattress and clean it properly to prolong its use and continue to fulfill its functions throughout its useful life.
Mattresses are usually rotated (bringing the head to toe area) every two months. Some can also flip face up and face down, but we must make sure that our mattress allows it: there are many mattresses today whose upper layer must always be in contact with the body since it is made of special materials such as memory foam, which they are the ones that give us adequate rest.
On pillows, the ideal would be to wash them as often as the covers. Its cleaning is very simple: we only have to put them in the washing machine with hot water and a couple of tennis balls to prevent them from weighing down.
