Night Listening | Don’t sleep in this position anymore! Be careful or you will ruin your body!

Have you ever jumped into bed after a busy day, raised your hands high, and lay down for a while? This posture of sleeping with your hands raised up is jokingly called "surrender-style sleeping posture" by netizens, which can indeed bring us physical and mental comfort in a short period of time. However, when we lie on the bed tiredly with our hands raised above our heads, three situations may occur, namely, shoulder impingement, supraspinatus ischemic injury, and quadrilateral foramen syndrome.

Image source: pexels.com Photographer: Karolina Grabowska

Shoulder impingement refers to the compression of some structures of the shoulder in the "subacromial space" when the hands are raised above the head. If shoulder impingement occurs for a long time, the supraspinatus muscle may be damaged. If the supraspinatus muscle is in a state of compression for a long time, it will cause ischemic damage to the supraspinatus muscle. In the long run, it will cause arm pain, limited range of motion, and affect daily life.

In addition to these problems, the surrender sleeping position may also lead to "quadric foramen syndrome". This "quadric foramen" is an important anatomical structure located in the shoulder, inside which the axillary nerve and the posterior humeral circumflex artery pass. Raising the arms for a long time will cause compression to it, causing shoulder pain, and even weakening the strength of shoulder abduction and external rotation, and even causing muscle numbness and paresthesia.

Image source: pexels.com Photographer: Karolina Grabowska

So what should we do if we want to avoid these situations? The most direct way is to adjust your sleeping position, you can put your arms on both sides of the body, or use a pillow to support your arms. In addition, we can also reduce pressure by strengthening the shoulder and upper limb muscles. Some simple muscle exercises, such as shoulder circular exercises, shoulder shrug exercises, arm rotation exercises, etc., can help improve the flexibility and strength of the shoulder muscles.

Image source: pexels.com Photographer: Alina Matveycheva

Having said so much today, sleep is a vital part of life. It has a profound impact on our health, mental state and quality of life. There is no unified standard answer to sleeping posture. But at least, we can start by recognizing these problems, and then make appropriate adjustments according to our physical condition to protect our health.

Review丨Zhang Qinghua, Chief Physician of Orthopedics, Shougang Hospital