Anyone ever sleep on their shoulder wrong and have it hurt for days?
idk wtf I did but I woke up 2 days ago with this pain in my shoulder right inside where the shoulder itself meets my chest and man it hurts. It's so bad in the morning I can't lift my arm over my head. But as the day goes on (and taking some nsaids) it lessens a bit.
What did I do to myself?
yeah. i call shit like that (slept weird, now have pain) sleep injuries. to avoid them, i try to go to bed well before becoming exhausted. or if i am super wiped out, i try to be very intentional when and where i am positioning myself. it's easy to fall asleep in an awkward position when you're wiped out completely.
i'm also a broken record about undiagnosed sleep apnea, because the unconcious movements and flopping your brain tells your body to do can generate some very weird postures that are jank on your mechanical body but somehow result in you being able to breathe easier.
most of the time sleep injuries will work themselves out as you stay out of the posture that stressed them and made them tender.
also, i had been doing routine sun salutations for years since my late 20s, off and on. i definitely noticed my body becoming crankier, stiffer, and more random pull-pain prone when i went through long periods without doing them. i'm in my 40s now. about a year ago i resolved to start every workday morning with 5 before i do anything else, i.e. waking up 10 minutes earlier. they are done fast and hit a lot of my problem areas (upper/mid/low back, hamstrings, shoulders). it's been a game changer for my mornings and the general day of being in my body, maintaining good posture, and maneuvering it around mechanically with balance. i think of it now as this alignment protocol i go through, like something out of an operator's manual for heavy, complex equipment. it's also a massive check in for lung capacity and upper respiratory function and all kinds of mental shit, but to the point, i probably haven't gotten a sleep injury in at least a year. and i was probably getting them like quarterly more or less into my late 30s early 40s.
. i think of it now as this alignment protocol i go through, like something out of an operator's manual for heavy, complex equipment.
Yeah, when I'm actually on my physical fitness shit I call it "maintaining the meat machine."
I don't know how old you are but as you get older odd, inexplicable pains are more common. I'm in late middle age. Yesterday was a first for me. When I yawned wrong - I got a sharp unpleasant pain in my the lower front part of my neck. What the fuck - from yawning wrong? I felt like I'd imagine I'd feel if I was in a street fight and a dirty fighter used a trick he loved like smashing a knuckle into my neck. Incredible, sudden pain.
For the first few seconds I thought it was funny. Aches and pains - what can you do? But after 5 to 10 seconds I started to worry I might have to go the emergency room. The pain didn't lessen at all and and my neck felt wrong. What the fuck - this is not funny. I started walking around the room to try to relax because that's all I could do. After ~20 seconds (it felt like 20 minutes) the pain finally started to go away. And then ~60 seconds later all I had was a tiny soreness.
Shit happens and it will get worse. Let me join the others in welcoming you to middle age.
Highly recommend mobility and strength exercises for your trouble spots. Make it strong and it's less likely to blow up on you from mundane normal activities.
Personal anecdote: I have a shitty back and I had to start PT and exercises bc I can't be laid up an entire week from putting fruit down on the kitchen counter again
all the people saying that this is a function of getting older are making me anxious, i periodically experience this and i’m 20 lol
It gets more common with age but it’s definitely normal to get random aches and pains when you’re young too. Just less of them lol
Apparently humans go through two major aging events, 40’s and 60s.
I think I just recently went thru the one for my 40s. The last two years my fingers just get stiff and hurt. I have to use no pillows (or one very very thin one) I need a stupidly soft bed (I’m a side sleeper), and was diagnosed with sleep apnea two years ago.
Like others said, welcome to getting older.
Thanks comrade.Like others said, welcome to getting older.
Might be time to start doing yoga/pilates/martial arts stretches. I've entered one of these aging periods myself and yeah, sometimes I wake up absolutely bodied. But when I remember to do that physical stuff (reverse planks saved my lower back) it tends to settle down and things feel okay again. Reminds me, I've been slacking off. Probably gonna start feeling busted again soon.
I was gonna say that sleeping wrong has never caused any problems for me (except for the rare occasion where I pull my calf muscles but I suspect that is a different thing).
Would suck if I have to deal with this shit in the coming years. I am already not looking forward to the rest of my life lmao.
EDIT: but for real, yes I do have experience with this unfortunately. Only started in my thirties or so.
Can confirm, in my 30's.
Same in my 30s and my shoulder hurts
Something like that happened to my shoulder when I was 30~ and I had to sleep in a weird position for 6 months before it went away.
Shit, that's a long time. Hopefully it clears up on it's own.
heh, i slept on my right wrist a few times as a teen and it took i dunno, 3-4 years before the pain went away...
as a fellow ancient decaying millenial i recommend magnesium before bed. either citrate or even better glycinate (chelated). most westerners are lacking magnesium and it serves as a natural muscle relaxant
you will sleep more log like. otherwise yeah i get some bad ones some nights probably from cats making me sleep very still. also my job is intensely physical with no 48 hr muscle recovery time (i only get 1 day off at time) and i think it's tearing my muscle fibers apart instead of bulking me up
I'll look into that.
Yo, thanks for the heads up. I always forget which vitamins and minerals do what and so just fall back to my bare minimum.
no problem! bio available magnesium is one of the few i will know if i skip a few doses
As others said, it's age.
It can also potentially be your mattress. I'm a side sleeper, but I invested into a soft mattress a few years ago and now my sleep is always really comfortable. I might not sleep as much as I want but it isn't painful.
Medium or firm mattresses aren't for side sleepers. Maybe that's what you have?
Medium or firm mattresses aren't for side sleepers. Maybe that's what you have?
I sleep on a futon
kind of a hard mattress thingy.I did something like that a year or so ago. Turned out to be nerve impingement for me.
Frontier medicine note: Musculoskeletal injuries are fairly easy to self-diagnose since there's a shitload of physical therapy resources telling you how to test for (or rule out) specific injuries by moving/stretching/etc. Also pretty easy to look up the requisite treatments, which are often exercises or stretches.
yeah never that bad but to a lesser extent quite frequently. im not yet 30 but suffer with shitty body hurts all the time disease. also have a fred flinstone mattress which doesn't help
No but I have with my neck a few times. I ask my doc for a muscle relaxant which makes it hurt less and increases my range of motion.
Got something like that happening right now, and I've had it several times before. If it were in my left arm, I'd rush to the hospital. It's a deep, burning ache that might be a nerve or something. But yeah, it's part of getting older.
Holy fuck we're all so decrepit. I was counting on you guys damnit!
I think we need to join the swoletariat A.S.A.Fucken.P.
My mum started getting jacked in her 60s or so and it was really impressive to see. She seemed surprised I even noticed but she went from just, uh, well roughly me-shaped, to sinewy and lean.
\
Fuck I'm so lazy though. :( :(
Is there a Stirner quote I can use to cope and excuse myself instead?
Yea
I had this earlier this year while staying with my inlaws for a few weeks. The mattress in their spare room was a super uncomfortable spring type and the pillow was way too thin and soft. I think the way I was sleeping to compensate for the discomfort of the bed was also putting a ton of pressure on my shoulder joint.
What helped me was alternating the side I slept on, positioning my shoulder in a way to avoid putting pressure on it while sleeping, and in the morning doing shoulder circles to slowly iron out my range of motion.
Haven't experienced such pain but I wake up every other day with numb fingers because I put my arm in the wrong position lmao
extremely relatable. Finding the right stack of thin and soft pillows to support my head and interleave my arm into seems to have kept that particular demon at bay lately.
Yeah my shoulder has been fucked for a long time tho and sleep me is a shit and will roll onto it. Pain sometimes can be really intense and not let up for ages and also make my fingers go numb and feel stiff
I swear most of the shit people say about aging is made up (or at least that it's not so cut-and-dry as "this starts happening the microsecond you hit 40 years of age"), I've been having this type of post-sleep-ache thing happen to me for as long as I can remember, at least since I was in my early 20s. Sometimes complications of having a shitty human body happen, as long as it's not something serious/chronic you just roll with it until it goes away.
Although also I noticed that losing a considerable amount of weight did help me with reducing general acheyness.
Yeah oddly enough some of my issues (like waking up with numb limbs from positional sleep fuckery) is much less common now than it was when I was younger. A lot of stuff I try now I'm better at than when I was "in my physical prime" too. I suspect I'm just lucky / HRT is magic / it's just a matter of time before it all comes crumbling down.
I'm so much better at a lot of things than I was when I was younger, like learning new skills or playing video games, because I'm way more patient and willing to trial and error than I was when I was like, under 25. There isn't a single game I was better at when I was a kid that I'm not WAY better at now.
Yeah unfortunately I get this occasionally. For me it's on the back right by the shoulder and neck, and it just sucks for at least three days.
Fuck body pain!
It doesn't solve the pain, but I do try to think of Montaigne when I'm in a situation like this. Of course he's talking about kidney stones and the instant relief (something unfortunately back pain doesn't usually have), but the shift from pain to not pain is amazing. The morning you wake up and slept right and no longer hurt is 10/10.
But is there anything delightful in comparison of this sudden change, when from an excessive pain, I come, by the voiding of a stone, to recover, as by a flash of lightning, the beautiful light of health, so free and full, as it happens in our sudden and sharpest colics? Is there anything in the pain suffered, that one can counterpoise to the pleasure of so sudden an amendment? O, how much does health seem the more pleasant to me, after a sickness so near and so contiguous, that I can distinguish them in the presence of one another, in their greatest show; when they appear in emulation, as if to make head against and dispute it with one another! As the Stoics say that vices are profitably introduced to give value to and to set off virtue, we can, with better reason and less temerity of conjecture, say that nature has given us pain for the honor and service of pleasure and indolence. When Socrates, after his fetters were knocked off, felt the pleasure of that itching which the weight of them had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the strict alliance betwixt pain and pleasure; how they are linked together by a necessary connection, so that by turns they follow and mutually beget one another; and cried out to good fellow Aesop, that he ought out of this consideration, to have taken matter for a fine fable.
Obviously pain isn't good on its own, and get yourself some Tylenol and if it persists see a doctor. But allowing yourself to feel through it and then, on the other side, appreciate feeling good even more is I think a good attitude when it's just the flesh being... Bleh.
As I get older "On Experience" continues to hit harder and harder.
I find that bolster pillows help
Sleeping wrong has become the default. Nowadays I've got a memory foam mat, sleep with my upper body on an incline with a ramp, a rolled up towel under my knees, and I'm still trying to figure out if a pillow under my head helps or hurts. And that doesn't guarantee anything, it just helps.
Lol, I can often fall asleep however, I'll just regret it in the morning.
Thanks for the tips.
Good luck! Don't forget to regularly rotate and/or flip your mattress.
Let me inject a little hope, for me "getting used to it" involved making time for exercises to rehab and strengthen my problem areas. It's absolutely helped me, highly recommend doing so as one's able
Unfortunately, the people constantly telling you exercise is really really good for you are correct.
Strength training is also way overlooked for health and longevity. It has large benefits even for 90+ year olds. At that age, your hip mobility and strength is one of the most important health indicators. If you can’t get up from sitting, your quality and length of life rapidly diminish.