If you ever went to bed feeling fine but woke up with muscular back pain, it could be a number of things.
1. Your mattress : Cheap spring mattresses deform at the level of the body’s center of gravity when lying down, which is at the pelvis (buttocks/hip level). Remove your sheets and take a look at your mattress: is there a slight depression in the center? If so, when you lie on your side, your pelvis sinks and forces your lumbar spine to arc downwards, compressing the joints and discs on the opposite side.
If you sleep on your stomach it puts your lumbar spine into hyper-extension (arcs sharply) forcing the facet (rear) joints of your lumbar spine together. It also forces you to twist your neck, which rotates all the vertebrae all the way down your spine.
Sleeping on your back is the best position because it allows your spine to be in the most neutral position. But if your mattress is old and has that pit in the middle, that can be enough to put a prolonged stretch on your back muscles as your pelvis sinks downward. This can make your back feel sore in the morning.
Solution: Get a new mattress. I recommend the TempurPedic viscoelastic mattresses, which resist deformation (always spring back) and last a long time. Basically, the mattress material pushes proportionally to the weight placed on it (more under the pelvis and upper back; less on the waist and lower legs) and rebounds so that it can do this every time.
If TempurPedic isn’t your thing (some users report feeling too hot in the summer on these mattresses), a high-quality spring mattress should work.
2. You may have strained your fascia while exercising or engaging in other intense physical activity that required heavy use of the back muscles, such as rock climbing. The fascia is the sheath that encases a muscle, protecting it as it lengthens and shortens inside the body, rubbing against adjacent muscles. It may take longer for fascial strains to be noticeable as they don’t release as much inflammation as a strained muscle. So, if you wake up and you have a very focal, sore spot on one of your back muscles that gets progressively worse, chances are you have a myofascial strain. You probably incurred it the previous day doing a back exercise or other type of heavy exertion.
Solution: Like all types of strains, fascia strains eventually resolve on their own, but it could be a couple of days and sometimes weeks of discomfort and problems with back mobility. If you wish to eliminate your back pain sooner than later, consider getting a Pulsed EMF coil.
Pulsed EMF, PEMF for short, is the external application of a body-compatible electromagnetic field that energizes injured/ sick cells and one of the few medical devices cleared for home use that I highly recommend. The magnetic field helps with molecular transport in and out of cells, which enables them to carry out their biological functions more efficiently; including healing, repair and protein synthesis.
Pulsed EMF has a number of reported health benefits such as pain reduction, faster fracture/injury healing, and better sleep. Whole body PEMF devices are not cheap, but are a sound investment in your health.
More information on how Pulsed EMF can help you >>
3. Your potassium levels are low. Hypokalemia, or low potassium can occur if your diet is deficient in potassium, and/or you engaged in strenuous activity such as hard labor, a long hike or a long run and sweated quite a bit. It is known to result in severe muscle spasms, sometimes involving one, particular muscle. Potassium in ionic form (K+) is involved in nerve transmission and muscle contraction, so if you are low, it can cause dysfunction that manifests as a muscle contraction abnormality.
Solution: Take Potassium supplements, about 500 mg/ day for several days until your muscle pain is resolved.
Bottom line, you don’t have to noticeably injure yourself to feel muscle pain. Muscles are complex organs that can get damaged just like any other organ in your body if they are stressed in a way that interferes with their proper movement. Potassium and other ionic imbalances, specifically calcium and sodium, can cause abnormal muscle function, and are therefore another possible cause of muscle pain.
