Learn how to sleep comfortably in a hospital chair easily

Hi folks, I'm Bob Shop, physical therapist. Brad Hainik. Physical therapy on the most famous physical therapist on the. Internet, in our opinion, of course. Yeah, Brad, sleeping on the job today, we're going to talk about how to sleep in a recliner with back pain or sciatica.

Etc. Because it might. There might be other reasons you're sleeping in a recliner, sure. People just do to have their legs up or I don't know what they're doing, but they do it for different reasons, right?

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So our first advice with sleeping in the recliner with back pain and sciatica is don't do it. Right. There typically is nothing but bad going to come from it. But there are some things, if you really want to, that we're going to show that's going to make the bad things. 

how to turn hospital chair into bed

Right. The problem with if you're sleeping in the recliner is still somewhat of a flexed position, and even if it feels better, you're kind of teaching your body to be in that rounded out position and it'll carry over till you're walking. You're to get bent, more bent over. Having said all that, however, we know there's people that just literally could not sleep unless they're in the recliner. I mean, I've I've had people like they're in so much pain laying down, lying down on the bed.

That and and you need sleep. Sleep isn't more important than than the recliner versus the the bed. Exactly. And there are some cases with some back pain like if you got stenosis, that's understandable. But if that's the case, listen up to show us what the options are. So it's going to minimize things from getting worse overtime. The first thing we might you might want to try if you haven't been able to sleep in bed, is actually trying to sleep in bed with a wedge.

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A leg wedge and we're going to show you what? That is, let's do that right now, Brad, so you can grab one of your pillows there. The reason this is it's kind of almost similar to sitting in bed, isn't it, Brad? I mean. It is. It does put your hips similar position to the you see recliner. What's? Happening here now, your hips are kind of flexed like they're in the recliner and I've had people. 

how to sleep in hospital chair

That if they slept in the recliner we were able to transition to this go back to this and I've had some people that still didn't work and so I mean right it's we don't never know and. If it is successful this way after a while sleeping like this a number of days or weeks. You know they can transition back to normal. Sleep. Or maybe a couple pillows. Sure, Yep. Underneath. Underneath the knees.

So these are leg wedges, they're only like 25 bucks or 20 bucks depending and some of them are a little bit longer, they're a little bit higher. And so, but it's it's worth a try. That's a comfortable position for a lot of people with back pain. All right. So if you have to be in the recliner, do you want to be the recliner person today, Brad? So first of all, you want to have your legs. Up so the you. 

Know and most people. Appreciate that and like that anyways. And once you're to hear, we advocate not sleeping this way but actually taking the recliner back so you're back as far as you can and hopefully you can. Tolerate that, right? You want to be as flat as you can. Now, the thing that we want to add in this position though is we want to give you some back support, right? So there's a lot of different ways you can try this. One is you can just try a throw pillow. And put it in your back and and that's gonna help put that arch in your back and kind of prevent that rounding out from occurring as much as it, it normally does. When you're in the recliner and the recliner, it's dependent on you how big your curves are, right. It depends on the recliner how soft it is.

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It's all these different factors. That's why we can't really tell you which thing to try. This feels a little bit big for me. This is a firmer recliner actually. So but I've had patients that they had old recliners and they were just literally wore out and they would put a full pillow like that just to take up the the worn out space of the recliner. You might get by with just a rolled towel there, Brad. Yeah. Now this support is obviously more specific. It's going to, you know, support where it is and that's so broad that may or may not be good for you. You'll know because when you put it in there and you lean into it, it's going to feel good this.

how to sleep in a hospital chair

Whole thing. You may take a towel, a larger towel, and roll it up. Or you may take a small towel and just fold it. Sure. I mean, there's there's a lot of different options if you eventually. Find something that you like. You might even try something more permanent that you can use in your car and and seats. But Brad, you tend to use this one right here. Right, yeah, this is exactly what I use in my recliner. This is for me. It's too round. I've got spondylolisthesis which is different than sciatica, but this works good. It gives me it's a memory foam. It gives me support from my sacrum up to my mid back and.

The I really like the memory foam aspect because you sink into it and it just supports well for me. For you, that's what we want to say, because there's going to be a lot of people if you try this, it may not work for you at all.

I'm going to say a lot of people that use this. They say or it feels too. Right. It did for me a little bit the first time I use it, But then after I let myself sink into it, it's like, oh, this is good. So I wish we. Could yeah. Say the one that's going to work for you for sure.

But we just can't, right? We're. Just being honest for not. So and what you want to also want to do along with this, believe it or not, is as much as possible is. Especially if you have to go out, get up and go to the bathroom or something that walk a little bit because it's always good to break it up and not. Lie down for too long a time when you have back pain, especially in a flex position.

Yeah, so those potty breaks in the middle of the night work out to. Your advantage? There you go. Just make sure you have a night light on so you're not falling or stumbling. Oh, I. Got a story about that? But we don't have time for that. I can't wait till here. So Mackenzie has a bunch of different roles too that you can try, especially if you're.