7 Reasons To Sleep More On Left Side

Are you a back sleeper, side sleeper or stomach sleeper?

It is pretty much accepted that sleeping on your stomach is the worst of the three. You have your neck in a significant rotation for prolonged periods of time and that position places pressure on your heart and lungs.

But what is the best position to sleep in?

When I was in chiropractic school in the early 1980s, we were taught that sleeping on your back was the best position for the body, but that traditional concept is being challenged by the side sleeping contingency.

Studies show that sleeping on your left side is best, but not in all cases. Those who have a tendency to migrate to the left of a double bed are apparently happier than their ‘right’ counterparts.

Sleep position is often a matter of comfort and most people change positions while sleeping and find themselves waking in a different position than the one in which they fell asleep in. We have little control of our movements after we fall asleep.

If it is recommended that you sleep on your right or left side for medical reasons, you can try sleeping with a pillow or leg spacer between your knees. Another trick is to place 2 pillows, one behind your back and the other in front of your chest. This will tend to stabilize your side sleeping position.

One hypothesis holds that right-side sleeping relaxes the lower esophageal sphincter, between the stomach and the esophagus. Another holds that left-side sleeping keeps the junction between stomach and esophagus above the level of gastric acid.

If you have chronic heart failure or have had a heart attack, sleeping on your right side, instead of the left, may be recommended by your physician. Sleeping on your right side may lower your heart rate and your blood pressure. Sleeping on your left side may have a negative effect on sympathetic nervous activity, which includes heart rate and blood pressure.

There are still other medical professionals that believe that moving around from position to position during the night prevents fluid from pooling in any specific area of the body.

The bottom line here is that just like drinking coffee, drinking wine and eating eggs, there are a lot of opinions out there as far as what is best for your health.

4 Reasons To Sleep On Your Left Side:

1. Better Heart Function - One of the biggest players on the left side is the heart. It makes sense that if you sleep on your left side, the lymph drainage toward the heart will again be helped by gravity, taking some of the workload off the heart as you sleep.

2. Better Elimination - The small intestine dumps waste through the ileocecal valve (ICV) on the right side of the body into the beginning of the large intestine. The large intestine travels up the right side of your belly the across the stomach, where it dumps waste into the descending colon on the left side.

Sleeping on the left side allows gravity to encourage the food waste to move more easily from the small intestine into the large intestine through the ICV.

3. Your Spleen Is On the Left - The spleen, which is part of the lymphatic system, is also on the left. The spleen is much like a gigantic lymph node, except that in addition to filtering lymph it also filters blood. When you lay on the left side, drainage back to the spleen is once again helped and made easier by gravity.

4. Is beneficial to circulation.

3 More Reasons For Pregnant Women:

1. Prevents the uterus from applying pressure to the liver (which is on the right side of the body).

2. Improves blood flow to the fetus, the uterus, and the kidneys.

3. Takes pressure off the back, which may alleviate typical pregnancy-related back pain.

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