Dr. Bradshaw stops by The Bobby Bones Show to share some advice on keeping our bodies healthy, answering our questions on the perfect pillow, sleeping positions, and the cracking sound your body makes.
Dr. Bradshaw specializes in chiropractic medicine, which works on the spine, the nervous system and more. A question he gets asked all the time is how to find the right pillow to get the best night's sleep. It depends on how you sleep but he said the healthiest sleeping position is on your back and side. When you sleep face down on your stomach, it’s bad for your neck because of the way you twist it to the side for hours and can out strain on the neck that creates headaches for people and lose the curvature in your neck. For people who sleep on their stomach, he suggests using a pregnancy pillow and hug it to keep you from rolling. The firmness of the pillow matters 100% and it depends on the age of the person and if they’ve had any conditions like recent surgeries. For someone who sleeps on their side most of the time, he suggests getting a pillow that is super square because it fills the hole between the shoulder and the neck.
People who aren’t getting good sleep are mostly due to their sleeping position because which way you sleep could cause strain on the body. Sleeping on your left side helps well with digestion if you’ve eaten around the time you go to bed, and sleeping on your right side helps if you’ve taken a pill before bed. There are also studies that show sleeping on the correct side during pregnancy can help things flow out of you more easily too.
Most people seek Dr. Bradshaw for lower back pain. They will help decompress the spine and help bring fluid back into that area. Lower back pain is so common because you spend most of the day sitting which decompresses the spine. Headaches are another issue people come to him a lot because they are tension related. When you’re looking forward for long periods of time, it starts to put stress on the neck which starts pulling on the upper cervical and irritates the nerves that go around the top of your head. They come in and they work on posture control to help take the stress and pressure off that area. Taking magnesium at night helps with headaches, better blood flow and relaxation during sleep. When you crack your neck, the sound you hear is a release of air that comes out of the joint and you also hear a shift of the joint, but it only moves a millimeter.
Dr. Bradshaw said it’s not a great idea to have your friend crack your back and he’s seen a lot of injuries from it. When you crack someone's back you are decompressing the spine, which creates temporary relief, but you aren’t helping repair their back. He also said tech or text neck is a real thing and it’s starting to become common. It’s happening from people looking down on their phones so much and it starts to create a straight spine in the neck when there is supposed to be a curve. He tells people to look at their phone more head-on and to put one hand on your armpit and hold your phone in the other hand.
To learn more, you can follow Dr. Bradshaw @Bradshaw_chiropractic and visit https://www.bradshawchiropractic.com.