Over 70 million Americans suffer from sleep issues, whether they have trouble falling asleep, wake up several times during the night, or wake up fatigued and not fully rested the next morning.
Sleep is critical. It is when our body heals and regenerates. Sleep is essential for:
- Tissue and muscle repair
- Healing injuries and illness
- Brain cleaning and reset
- Energy production
- Mood and hormone regulation
If you’re not sleeping, you’re not recovering, you’re not healing, and eventually, that will snowball into numerous health problems.
Every day, your brain produces waste products known as amyloid plaque, one of the most significant factors linked to Alzheimer’s and dementia. Sleep is the only time your brain actually cleans and clears all the waste and resets your nervous system.
Poor sleep has been shown to dramatically weaken your immune system, putting you at risk for common bugs and also more serious problems like cancer. It raises your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. If you’re missing sleep, it’s very difficult to lose weight, and it can actually cause you to continue to gain weight over time. If you’re working out, it’s hard to maximize the gains from your workouts. Exercise creates the stimulus for growth, but the growth and gains from your exercise only happen through healthy nutrition and rest.
Many people think they can function with less sleep. About 10 to 15% of the population can function with six to seven hours of sleep, and only about 10 to 15% of the population requires more than eight hours of sleep. However, 75 to 80% of all populations in all cultures require between seven and eight hours of sleep every night.
The consequences of sleep deprivation occur with as little as an hour less sleep than required on three days a week or more. That’s not a huge amount of missed sleep needed to create serious health consequences over time.
Other factors that affect sleep are:
- Poor sleeping posture and positions
- High-stress lifestyles
- Medical conditions like sleep apnea, insomnia, or chronic pain syndromes
- Stimulants, caffeine, alcohol, and prescription medication
Many people think alcohol helps them sleep, but research shows that even though alcohol creates sedation, sedation is not sleep. That’s why sleep medication is actually not beneficial; sedation doesn’t activate the appropriate responses in your brain that regular, healthy sleep does. You don’t get all the healing, cleaning, regeneration, hormone balancing, and repair benefits that occur with sleep.
That’s why the conventional approach to sleep issues is not recommended. Medication has been shown to make problems worse. Plus, it has serious side effects, like serious mood changes, personality changes, and risk of self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and actions. Sleep medication doesn’t get to the actual problem interfering with your ability to have a restful sleep.
$49 New Patient Special
Includes Comprehensive Consultation, Complete Physical Examination, All Necessary Digital X-rays, Report of Findings.
How Our Care Plan Works
1. Identify The Root Cause
You will never be able to achieve wellness by chasing your symptoms; you’ll only get stuck on a merry-go-round of medication offering temporary relief. True wellness comes by addressing and correcting the root cause of your symptoms. That work takes advanced diagnostic tools and doctors committed to understanding how you’re feeling and how it’s affecting your life. This crucial first step is the only way to forge a solid foundation for effective care.
2. Discover The Path To Your Goals
Once we’ve identified the root cause of your issues, together, we’ll develop a unique approach tailored to your needs and aspirations. Our various treatment modalities allow us to get the best results regardless of where a patient has been and where they’re going. Whether hitting a new PR, staying competitive through the back nine, or keeping up with your grandkids, each phase of your care is purpose-driven, taking you closer to the person you were meant to be.
3. Live Life Without Limits
With a solid foundation and a clear roadmap, you can achieve and sustain a vibrant, pain-free life, fully equipped to reach your God-given potential. We walk with you on this journey and provide you with the tools and knowledge to ward off future illness and injury and ensure continual improvements to your health and outlook. When you shed the anxiety and despair that comes with a life dictated by health limitations, you can achieve things you never thought possible.
How We Improve Sleep in Missouri City, TX
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
We start with every new patient’s experience by listening to their story, getting to know their unique situation, history, what’s been going on with their health, and their health goals. Our examination will include neurological and orthopedic tests as well as digital X-ray imaging when necessary. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
This information helps us understand your unique situation and customize the most effective approach. Our goal is to identify and correct the underlying root cause of your sleeping issue, rather than treating the symptoms with a quick crack of the back, stretches, hot packs, or pills.
The Benefits of Chiropractic Care for Sleep
Your spine and nervous system are the master control system that regulates every function in your body. A misaligned, unhealthy spine triggers a stress fight-or-flight response, which disrupts regular hormone cycles and raises cortisol levels. Cortisol affects the sleep centers in your brain and makes it challenging to have healing, regenerative sleep.
Poor sleep also has a musculoskeletal aspect—pain makes it harder to fall asleep. Back pain, neck pain, nerve pain, muscle tension, pinched nerves, numbness and tingling, burning, and muscle spasms make it really hard to get comfortable, fall asleep, and stay asleep when you’re in pain.
Chiropractic is the best medicine for better sleep because it corrects the root cause of the physical and neurological issues preventing you from sleeping well. Without medication or injections, chiropractic care optimizes your nervous system function for balanced hormone production and corrects the underlying musculoskeletal issue triggering your pain symptoms.
Sleep Modification Coaching in Missouri City, TX
All animals, including humans, have been programmed since the beginning of time to regulate their sleep cycle with the rising and setting of the sun. When the sun rises, your body naturally activates a hormonal response to wake you up and energize you for the day. As the sun goes down, your body should naturally trigger the opposite hormonal shift, shutting your systems down into a sleep cycle where your body heals and regenerates.
Getting better sleep starts in the morning. First thing, get natural sunlight into your eyes and your optic nerve, signaling to your brain and nervous system that the cycle is starting. This will set your course throughout the rest of the day, helping you wind down at the right time. If you can get that sunlight while spending a few moments outside, even better.
In the evening, be consistent each night, even on weekends, with your routine. Go to sleep around the same time each night, dim the lights, and avoid blue light screens that overstimulate your nervous system. Create a sanctuary of darkness in the room. Lower the temperature of your room. According to research, 66° to 68° is the ideal temperature for quickly falling into a deep, restful sleep.
White noise, from a machine, app, or just turning on a fan, along with journaling, can help you destress if your mind is racing before bed.
Ideal Sleeping Position
The ideal sleeping position is on your back with a neutral spine. That means your cervical curve is properly supported with a pillow specific to your body shape.
Side sleeping is fine, as long as you have a neutral head position, without your head sagging towards the bed or propped up too high towards the ceiling. You want your head in line with your spinal alignment, not bent or scrunched up shoulders.
Your pelvis and legs shouldn’t be twisted. Placing a pillow between your knees helps prevent twisting of your hips and legs while you sleep. It also improves spinal alignment if you’re a side sleeper.
Avoid sleeping on your stomach. It places too much pressure on your neck for too long a period.
Supplementation
Some of the best supplements to improve sleep quality are magnesium glycinate, L-theanine, and GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid). These amino acids help calm the nervous system and help your body naturally produce melatonin, an essential hormone for sleep.
We don’t recommend taking melatonin directly, unless you’re traveling long distances and trying to adapt to a new time zone. Ideally, your body is able to produce melatonin on its own, rather than artificially.
Common Causes of Poor Sleep in Missouri City, TX
Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a common condition in which one temporarily stops breathing while sleeping. Over time, it contributes to fatigue and stress on the cardiovascular system.
We don’t treat sleep apnea directly, but by correcting biomechanical and postural alignment of the spinal column and rib cage, we can improve breathing mechanics and diaphragmatic rhythm. Neurologically, chiropractic enhances communication between the brain and body to strengthen healthy respiratory patterns.
Insomnia
Having a hard time staying or falling asleep is highly related to chronic stress, emotional or physical, hormonal imbalances, and nervous system dysfunction. Chiropractic care is excellent at helping create a balanced stress response and regulating your nervous system. Correcting spinal misalignments lowers cortisol, the stress hormone behind your fight-or-flight response, and stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for healing, rest, repair, and recovery.
Headaches and Migraines
Obviously, the physical pain of a headache can make it difficult to sleep. Headaches and migraines can also be associated with fluctuations in serotonin cycles. Every day, your body cycles through high serotonin in the morning, which gets gradually converted into melatonin later in the day.
Headaches can disrupt this hormonal rhythm, which is essential to regulating your sleep cycle. Chiropractic care has an extremely high success rate, eliminating the root cause of headaches and migraines both neurologically and vascularly.
Check Out Our Location Near You
5425 Hwy 6 Suite A-300, Missouri City, TX 77459
Frequently Asked Questions
Can chiropractic help with sleep?
Yes, chiropractic can help restore healthy sleep patterns by regulating your neurology. Adjustments help balance and lower cortisol levels, which takes you out of the fight-or-flight stress mode and activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for healing, rest, and repair.
Can being out of alignment cause insomnia?
Yes, having an unhealthy spinal alignment can trigger a neurologic reaction, increasing the chances of insomnia.
How do you sleep after a chiropractic adjustment?
Within weeks of starting a chiropractic routine, many patients report significant improvements in the quality of their sleep.
What is the best sleeping position for your spine?
The best sleeping position is on your back or your side, maintaining a neutral spine. Your neck should be properly supported, and your hips shouldn’t be twisted.
What’s the worst way to sleep?
The worst sleeping position is on your stomach.
Can a chiropractor help with sleep apnea?
Chiropractors don’t directly treat sleep apnea. We significantly improve body mechanics and posture to allow for easier breathing and a stronger nervous system to regulate your diaphragmatic rhythm.
Can chiropractic care help with snoring?
Snoring can be related to jaw position and the health of your cervical spine. Corrective chiropractors specialize in correcting cervical alignment and mechanics. Those corrections impact jaw positioning, helping to relieve excessive snoring.
Can chiropractic help with anxiety?
Chiropractic doesn’t directly treat anxiety, but many report significant improvements in their anxiety after chiropractic adjustments because of the effect it has in balancing the sympathetic nervous system.
Which sleep aids really work?
We will conduct an examination, which may include imaging, to determine precisely which sleep aids are right for you. We often recommend supplements based on each patient’s specific needs.
Why is sleep important?
Sleep is when your body heals and regenerates. It is critical to the function of every system in your body. Missing more than an hour of sleep three nights per week can have serious health consequences.
$49 New Patient Special
Includes Comprehensive Consultation, Complete Physical Examination, All Necessary Digital X-rays, Report of Findings.
