Why You Wake Up Stiff in the Morning — The Chiropractic Explanation

In this clinical episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains the real reasons people wake up stiff, sore, or tight in the morning. Learn what happens to your spinal joints overnight, why inflammation settles during sleep, how poor sleep posture contributes to stiffness, and how chiropractic adjustments restore mobility and reduce mechanical inflammation. If your mornings start with stiffness, this episode gives you the clinical breakdown of what’s going on — and what to do about it.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Hello. Thanks for tuning in. A lot of people I meet out in the public come up to me and they let me know that every morning when they wake up, they feel like their back is very stiff and they feel like it's really hard to get going in the morning. And somebody said, Hey, you should do a podcast about people who wake up in the morning and their back is really stiff or tight or sore, what's going on? And. Can you break it down for me clinically, what's happening and then what do you do as a chiropractor to help that? So really what we go on talking about when you wake up in the morning, your back is stiff. It's basically you've been laying not moving for a long time and your body starts to undergo changes because of the lack of motion. A lot of you have heard me talk about when you walk the muscles contract and they push nutrients into their joint spaces and pull the toxins out. And flush everything and really bring the good in and the bad out. But when you're not moving. That doesn't happen. Now. We talk a lot about a subluxation when one or two of the bones in the spine are misaligned, and when those are misaligned they're locked up. They're trying to keep it protected from injuring it more so the body locks'em up so they can't get hurt more. And when you move around, even when you're walking, even if you're in a marathon, even if you go with me in the mornings over at my favorite gym, movement, fitness, and work out with me. And their subluxated. They're not moving and therefore they're not getting flushed out and the good stuff in. But at night, nothing's moving, right? You're laying in bed you're sitting still. So what happens is this allows all your spine to become fixated because you're not moving. And at night when you're not moving things start to undergo changes. Sometimes you might hear me talk about if you go outside and rake the yard, and when you go to hit the chair, you stop moving. That's when the inflammation comes rushing in. Now if your spine's misaligned, there's gonna be an element of inflammation in there. So if you've got a subluxation, say in your upper lower back, your L one, L two area during the day and you're moving around, the inflammation doesn't really get a chance to build up around it because you're moving. Now those two vertebraes themselves might not be moving, but everything else is moving around it and it's not allowing the inflammation a chance. But when you stop, the inflammation rushes in there and starts happening. This is why if you rake the yard, you sit down, you feel fine, but you go to get up, you feel like you're 10 years older. because the inflammation's rushed in as soon as you stop moving and the inflammation makes your tissue sticky and the sticky starts to make adhesions and knots and everything else. Maybe you've watched a professional basketball game or a college game and someone twists their ankle, but they go ahead and finish the game. They finish the game and rip on the court, no problem. But as soon as the game's over, you'll see they put their ankle like in a bucket of ice water to try to stop the inflammation. because the inflammation's not gonna really come. Full speed until they stop moving and you see the next day they can barely move. I know I've watched videos of NFL football players, they show 'em the day after the game and they have to pull'em outta bed and get 'em moving there. That's why they can't play day after day. And the ice logs, the hockey team, I might take care of. They spend a tremendous amount of time after the game stretching and flushing, knowing that as soon as they stop moving, they're gonna tighten up and they have to play again the next day. They don't get a day week off like the football players do. So this is what happens when you stop moving and how the joint caps look tighten. The synovial fluid isn't getting regenerated and just the overall tissue around there's getting more and more inflamed and swollen and making those adhesions. This is why, a lot of times we talk about. And you start your day getting up and moving around a little bit, like a little twist, a little this and that helps break up some of those little adhesions and starts bringing blood to the area. It helps you heal. This is why a hot shower in the morning feels so good, like loosens you up. because the hot moist goes in there and loosens all the muscles up around the area of the spine. But what happens a lot of times when we're bad, let's say we have a bad neck posture, maybe then we start stomach sleeping more or less because of our necks hurting us. Or our pelvis is twisted. We're waking up in the morning saying, man, my hips are tight, this and that. So if we have a mattress that doesn't support us, we have a pillow that's too big or too small. We're constantly creating stress in our spine when we're not moving. because we're not, because we're not moving because we're locked in those positions. I'm really big. A lot of people say what kind of mattress should I own? What kind of pillow should I own? Everyone's head, shoulder, and spine and mattress and pillow are unique. You have to get, when you have somebody look at you, make sure you're laying in a nice straight line, twist and turned. But I really want you to understand, when people ask me about sleeping posture doesn't really matter to me because you're gonna turn and twist away the best way you can based on the stress to your spine. And after you sit there too long and too much inflammation kicks and you roll over and. Toss. So if your system is tossing and turning every night, there's a huge indicator you might have some spinal problems that need to be corrected. Let's also talk about your disc height. What happens, the hockey team likes to get their height measured first thing in the morning. because they know as the day goes on, gravity pushes down the disc, lose some of their fluid, and you lose a little bit of your eye. So if you want to be as tall as you can, you measure yourself when you first wa wake up. But if you're laying down at night and the joints are fixated, then the discs are not rehydrating the way they're supposed to. And over time these, this not rehydrating the way they're supposed to, they start to deteriorate. And as I start to deteriorate, that's when the arthritis kicks in. Now chiropractic, we only call the spine arthritic when we start to see decrease in disc height and bony growth around the vertebras. The a MA defines arthritis in the spine. I woke up this morning and my back was stiff. So we have a little bit more specific and exact kind of diagnosis for it. So if a medical doctor told you have arthritis, that means you probably woke up this morning, your back was stiff. And chiropractic, we do a bigger dive into where are actually arthritis in the spine is. But if you're waking in the morning, you're really stiff, that's a chance that you're starting to get some other rhythmic process occurring in. The chiropractic can measure those disc heights with a good quality x-ray. So some of our things that really make us alarm is when the stiffness that goes on for more than 30 minutes, like you wake up in the morning up for over 30 minutes, it's bothering you if you have any numbness or tingling or pain traveling down areas. Say, man, I wake up in the base of my neck is really tight and my hands fall asleep and everything else. Or if this happened after an accident, like a physical accident. Following, tripping and this and that. These are things that we really need to get in, take a deep look at right away. These are things you shouldn't wait too long to go visit your chiropractor about and what's the chiropractor gonna do when they see you? Where your sleep stuff's gonna be huge for us. because after in my clinic, after we take your x-rays, we'll be able to see what these subluxations might be. We'll be able to evaluate your posture and we'll have a much better idea of the overall stresses your spine face every day. Now, once we can start doing chiropractic adjustments and removing some of these stressor that your spine sees every day, you're gonna start knowing some more range of motion. But one thing we're gonna start having is less inflammation at night when we stop moving. So we're gonna restore the motion and get you moving better, and you're gonna start feeling better every day when you wake up. That's often a common side effect that people tell me. One is the first adjustment. They have a great night's sleep. because the fight and flight nervousness nervous system has been turned off. But the bigger thing they tell me is that overall they're time to wake up and have more energy. Now you don't feel this right away. A little bit better every day. That's, if you could look back 30 days after starting care, you're gonna, you can't believe how much better you are after 30 days. Maybe not after the first day, but after you know it, it builds up and accumulates. And so we're overall reducing the amount of inflammation in your body, which is great on your whole body, right? And we're doing this without drugs. Chiropractic's, a hundred percent natural. And your chiropractor might suggest different sleep postures or sleep ideas for you based on your x-rays. I know if you have a curve in your lower back, a lot of times I have you put a pillow between your knees or I might have you lay in your back a pillow, pillow underneath your knees. We might have you have somebody look at you and see your neck posture based on the pill you have. And we had those pillows that had the cutout in the middle. A lot of times we have you put that. Part down or up, depending on what your x-rays look, we might flip that pillow around. So it's very important you bring that stuff and let the chiropractor know. And as we get rid of these misalignment, that radiating pain, that numbness that we talked about should go away too. So what are some of the best things you can do today to make yourself. Better. You can try to really look at your posture when you're sleeping. Now it's tough because you're asleep, but you have somebody else look at you and see how you're laying down. I also recommend a good, cool down exercise right before your day's over. This gets simply going for a walk. And when I say your day's over, I don't mean before you climb into bed, I mean before you hit your favorite chair, kick off your shoes and relax a little bit. Go for a little bit of a walk. Let your body know the day coming to an end. Think it could be like a cool down exercise. And then maybe before you climb in the bed, you can do a couple quick stretches and those your chiropractors should be able to give to you. One more stretch, one more push to clean the joints out before you go to bed. And so they'll give you a lot of good tips and suggestions about little activities you can do before you climb in the bed. But, waking up every morning feeling stiff. A lot of people think it's just old age, and that's just not true. If it was, the whole back would feel not individual spots, right? Because your whole back's the same age. So it's really important that you get your spine checked a lot by a chiropractor if you're starting to feel this way. So if you're up in the morning, you're feeling stiff, you haven't radiating pain or anything like that, a quick trip to the chiropractor, a quick chiropractic exam could put the end of all this. So I hope I answer that question about what happens in, I wake up in the morning and my spine feels stiff. One thing, it's an indicator that you could be on the road on the arthritic process. It's not a fast road, it's a long road. So just because you wake up stiff today, don't think tomorrow you're gonna have arthritis. And that's, I'm not trying to put the fear factor in you, but it is an indicator that we need to take a look at that. Chiropractor can give you good posture exercises and stretches to do before you go to bed. The chiropractor can also tell you about pillow placement, other things before you go to bed, and most importantly, the chiropractor can give you some stretches and tips to do before you go to sleep too. But the most of the most important thing is you can get your chiropractic adjustment and get rid of the things that are causing all this stiffness. Problems and stress in the first place. Again, those are called the subluxations, and only a chiropractor is trained to find and correct those nobody else. So if another healthcare provider told you that your back doesn't have any miscellaneous or subluxations, I laugh at that all the time. I get extra reports from patients that. Normal alignment. I put the x-ray up and they have a scoliosis. I'm like, what are you talking about? Normal alignment. Only a chiropractor is trying to look at the x-rays this way. So don't go by the other healthcare provider. Always ask a chiropractor about chiropractic care. Just like you'd never ask your optometrist questions about your teeth, you'd only ask 'em questions about your eyes. So if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, leave a comment or a message wherever you'll watch or listening to this, and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. Thank you for tuning in.