Are you blaming your pain and poor health on your bed, work chair, or picking up your kids?

You did not sleep funny!

Every week in our office, I will hear one of our patients say something like,”I must have slept funny last night.” When someone says this, it’s most likely because they went to sleep the way they always do, but woke up in pain. They either have low back pain or neck pain, or a rib pain, maybe their arm hurts. Other times, I’ll hear parents blame their pain on their kids, from maybe playing too rough with them or “picking them up funny?”

Notice the explanation usually isn’t sure, hence the use of “funny.”

Please allow me to set the record straight on these funny yet very concerning problems with health.  If you do a fairly normal motion, like go to work, sleep in a bed, play with your kids, exercise, and feel fine in the moment, but the next day have pain, then your problem is not the bed or exercise or your kids, the problem is you and your ability to adapt. The problem is your body.  Your body is most likely overworking from a neurology and muscle point of view, and probably out of alignment from a skeletal or structural point of view.

When the nervous and muscular systems are overwhelmed, then the body can no longer adapt to normal stress…be it big or small, emotional or physical.

Now look, yes, there are times when someone actually falls asleep on a road trip in a car, or starts a new exercise and does the workout wrong, and yes, these single incidents are most likely the cause in those cases, but what we are talking about is much different. We are not talking about obvious mistakes, we are talking about things that are normal and not so obvious, so people just pick something like their bed to blame it on.

And then? They go out and buy a new bed, feel better for a couple weeks, then have the same pain, because they didn’t fix their body, they just got a different bed. I certainly am a fan of buying a new bed every 5 to seven years, but I would rather sleep on a bad bed with a healthy body than a good bed with a bad body.

Think of it this way.  My kids and I will be going camping this summer.  I will probably sleep with a sleeping back on uneven ground.  While my regular bed at home may be more comfortable, I should be able to go camping and wake up with no funny pains.  If I do, then it would be a sign that I’m out of tune (nerve/muscle) or alignment (bone) which therefore means I’m not healthy and I won’t respond as well to physical, chemical, or emotional stress. By the way, all of those stressors will and should continue to come the rest of my life, so I would hope to be as in alignment and in tone as I could be to overcome and adapt better when life throws out curveballs.

So, if you are still blaming your pains on your in-laws’ guest bed, your chair at work, your kids, an exercise you typically do, your car, or the like… Think again.  The problem is most likely you and your body and you need to get them in tune – naturally!

In our office we use SEMG (static electromyography), HRV (heart rate variability), thermography, and x-rays to evaluate the state of tone and alignment in the body.  Once examined, we use a variety of chiropractic adjustment techniques to restore balance to the nervous system, and reevaluate those results later to make sure there was a measurable change, not just symptomatic improvement. Many times, counseling on exercise, stretching, and nutrition is also necessary.

These problems are easily correctable, but simply paying for better ergonomics or a better bed is not the answer to long term health. Only an aligned body and healthy brain/body connection through the nerves can do that!