Three reasons you may have severe neck pain after sleeping

Sleeping is supposed to be a time for your body to rest and recuperate from daily activities. However, your sleep may not seem so restful if you’re waking up with pain in your neck. Waking up with a sore neck can make it harder to concentrate during the day, and it can also affect your day in other negative ways. To stop waking up in pain, you must first understand why it’s happening in the first place, and there are three issues that could be the reason you have severe neck pain after sleeping. 

1.   Unsupportive pillow

Your pillow may seem like your best bedtime friend, but it could actually be the reason you feel severe neck pain after sleeping. This is because your pillow may not be supporting your head and neck properly. 

A pillow that properly supports the head and neck should keep these structures level with the rest of the spine. If your pillow is too hard, it can cause the head and neck to flex upward, or the pillow could be causing a downward bend because it’s too soft. In either case, extra strain is placed on the muscles and tendons in the neck, and this can lead to a bad pain in the neck when you wake up. 

2.   You’re injured but you didn’t know it

Severe neck pain after sleeping can also be caused by car accident injuries or injuries from playing sports. For instance, whiplash is a neck injury that can come from a car accident or playing sports. Whiplash is when your head moves violently back and forth after an impact, and this violent movement can cause neck muscle strain or damage. However, for some people the pain of whiplash can often take hours or even days to show up. This is why you could go to bed feeling fine and wake up with neck pain. 

3.   Nerve compression

Nerve compression could also be the reason someone feels severe neck pain after sleeping. The compression or pinching of neck nerves can be caused by several things. For instance, a bulging neck disc can push against a nerve. Bony projections on the edge of bones are called bone spurs, and these can develop along the edge of a neck vertebra. 

If they grow large enough, they can irritate or pinch nerves in the neck while you’re sleeping, and this can cause pain that’s hard to ignore when you wake up. In some cases, pain from a compressed nerve can even keep you from falling asleep or wake you up during the night. 

Peak Performance can help treat severe neck pain after sleeping

If you aren’t sure why you have such bad neck pain when you wake up, our team at Peak Performance can help you figure it out. We’ll perform a one-on-one screening to determine the cause of your neck issues. Once the cause has been established, we can then build you a personalized therapy plan to address the issue, and this plan will be designed to provide benefits such as: 

• Reduced pain
• Improved range of motion
• Increased muscle strength
• Improved ability to sleep

Don’t keep waking up to neck pain. Contact us today for more information or to schedule an initial appointment.