TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)

369 pointsby alecstabout 1 year ago

39 comments

keyboredabout 1 year ago
This is so fascinating.<p>I slept (on my back) on the floor for a while. It was at times amazing—I would wake up and feel ready to go. Not like my muscles were weak or temporarily atrophied. Like, I didn’t know that was possible after a full nights sleep.<p>There seems to be so much potential in just reflecting on an considering what a “paleo” approach to something would be. And then you can just do that. You don’t even need to buy hundreds of dollars worth of supposedly ergonomic equipment. Just sleep in a funny-looking position. Just squat instead of sitting on a chair… if you can bare the social awkwardness or ridicule.<p>It’s so simple. Why do we make things complicated?<p>Well in part because “modern humans” cannot just <i>do</i> these things without becoming regarded as merely a modern human with eccentric hobbies. Because that’s what you get pegged as!—not as a modern human who rediscovered (through YouTube&#x2F;the Web) some ancient wisdom but as a paleo-hipster, just another quirky modern human subculture.<p>And in part that is correct. You cannot be, say, a Western Buddhist who has all the know-how and experience of a born-in-the-culture (Asian) Buddhist. And in that same way you cannot become a non-modern… human.<p>But wait. Why would you want to? You are who you are. You may be a Buddhist from Scranton, PA who has no relation to Asian culture. Or an office worker who squats at the office. <i>But why is that weird?</i> Yeah you’re not a “real Buddhist” in that terribly essentialist sense, and you’re not a born-in-the-culture kind of human who has never used a chair. But why do you have to be that in order to make these (eccentric) choices for yourself? If it works for you, just go for it you paleo-hipster.
评论 #39750784 未加载
评论 #39754076 未加载
FredrikMeyerabout 1 year ago
I find this article quite insubstantial. He lists alternative sleeping positions, but no sources backing up the claim that &quot;western sleeping positions&quot; (whatever that is) are worse.<p>Also only <i>one</i> citation, and that is to back up the claim that there are 200 primates.<p>Nice pictures though - I feel happy that I can sit (relatively) comfortably in the squatting position (as an European).
评论 #39744544 未加载
评论 #39741564 未加载
评论 #39741596 未加载
评论 #39741519 未加载
评论 #39746703 未加载
评论 #39741506 未加载
评论 #39746659 未加载
评论 #39746667 未加载
评论 #39741547 未加载
评论 #39742238 未加载
onetimeuse92304about 1 year ago
For my entire life I slept in one of those postures (&quot;the lookout&quot;). I had a bunch of problems (pain in the chest, pain in the back, some problems with my knees not loaded symmetrically, my feet getting &quot;extended&quot; for quite a long time causing problems with Achilles). I also had a problem with restlessness -- these positions cannot be maintained for long without moving, I would be changing my position very frequently.<p>Couple of years ago I have injured my ACL and had to learn to sleep on my back. Now I am much happier sleeper. Now I generally do not move at all during night (I wake up exactly as I have fallen asleep and my sleep tracker tracks way less movement). All of the pains gone.
评论 #39748492 未加载
评论 #39744532 未加载
hnbadabout 1 year ago
It&#x27;s odd that the paper goes to great lengths to talk about protecting your penis from insects but at the same point seems to ignore women completely - all the illustrations depict men. Having met women (shocking, I know), bust size can be a significant factor in ergonomics so it would be interesting to see how that factors into it. Also anecdotally, pregnant belly-sleepers frequently rely on cushioning and people may prefer certain sleeping positions after having given birth or suffering from certain ailments. I&#x27;m also certain that waist size (esp. obesity) may alter preferences.<p>It&#x27;s an interesting paper but given the lack of substance this feels more like a school presentation than something you&#x27;d find in an academic journal.
评论 #39746515 未加载
评论 #39744385 未加载
eightnoteightabout 1 year ago
I never focussed much on sleeping postures, but one day I read this article about how acid reflux goes away if you side-sleep on your left hand side i.e stomach is at a lower height than when you sleep on your right hand side<p>that really changed my life, it was like, how did I waste 28 years of my life without finding this trick :D
评论 #39758115 未加载
danw1979about 1 year ago
I’m sure there are some great points in this paper but this bit of un-evidenced bit of speculation turned me off:<p>&gt; It has been noted that guide dogs working in towns breathe the same pollutants as humans yet do not have asthma. Could this be because when they lie on their chests the kickback from the upper ribs keeps the corresponding vertebrae mobile, allowing the sympathetic system to work efficiently?<p>Or could it be one of the many other physiological differences between humans and dogs ?<p>I think the author notes that this is mostly a collection of anecdotal observations, but linking a primarily inflammatory disorder like asthma with musculoskeletal problems is a bit far fetched in my layman’s opinion. Sounds a bit like chiropractic quackery to me.
评论 #39742358 未加载
评论 #39742718 未加载
awonghabout 1 year ago
It’s crazy to think about how little we actually know about how the human body functions- not even to say what an “optimal” sleep position might be, but even a high quality study on how different sleep positions might affect the physiology of the body. I have yet to find any real serious scientific analysis of this.
评论 #39741895 未加载
评论 #39741795 未加载
bee_riderabout 1 year ago
IMO it would be better for the government to keep this sort of general library content on a url that doesn’t contain NIH. They have the disclaimer,<p>&gt; As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.<p>Anyway, it seems like an interesting collection of anecdotes that would be a good place to start searching. I don’t see as much value in some of his speculations. The bit about dogs not getting asthma seems a little out of scope.<p>Actually, do dogs get asthma? Quick googling seems to provide contradictory answers, with the general trend that apparently cats get it more often, and apparently dogs get some sort of allergic reaction thing that is technically not asthma, but is very similar?
评论 #39745822 未加载
评论 #39745871 未加载
karaterobotabout 1 year ago
I notice that all of the sleep positions are either on the stomach or side. I usually go between side and stomach when sleeping, and can&#x27;t really fall asleep very well on my back. But, my impression is that most people go between side and back, with stomach sleepers being a minority (I&#x27;ve even heard it called weird).<p>This study backs that up (54% side, 37% back, 7% stomach)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dovepress.com&#x2F;sleep-positions-and-nocturnal-body-movements-based-on-free-living-acce-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-NSS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dovepress.com&#x2F;sleep-positions-and-nocturnal-body...</a><p>I wonder if the difference is cultural, or technological: that is, do we learn to sleep a certain way, or is it that the mattress changes the equation somehow and makes people 5x more likely to sleep on their back than on their stomach?<p>In the past, I&#x27;ve hypothesized that it&#x27;s cultural, and my just-so etiology for the phenomenon is that it comes from TV and movies. It&#x27;s much easier to get a good shot of an actor delivering dialog while lying in bed on their back, compared to their stomach, so we see people sleeping on their back and learn to do it that way.<p>This is all just uninformed speculation, and of course it assumes the original, linked article is valid at all.
评论 #39746844 未加载
kasperniabout 1 year ago
Also, tribespeople don&#x27;t spend most of their waking time sitting in front of a computer or TV.
WaitWaitWhaabout 1 year ago
I am very uncomfortable with this paper to be called scientific research. It certainly appears the author had extensive life experiences, but does not demonstrate any of the data he collected.<p>&gt; If you are a medical professional and have been trained in a “civilised” country you probably know next to nothing about the primate Homo sapiens and how they survive in the wild.<p>Starting off by insulting an entire population and making assumptions about what they do or do not know is odd. The disrespect continues on how an entire medical field &quot;do not know that nature has provided&quot;. The author continues on to further disrespect by moving medical professionals in to &quot;so called civilised people&quot;, and makes medical conclusions of &quot;suffer[ing] unnecessarily from musculoskeletal problems&quot;.<p>And, this is just in the first paragraph. The second paragraph goes into the author&#x27;s background how he lived amongst tribal people, commanded a platoon of African soldiers, and organized expeditions to meet native peoples and study their sleeping and resting postures.<p>&gt; I tried to carry out surveys to collect evidence but they were meaningless<p>The author collected evidence, and the evidence was meaningless (alternative hypothesis false?) so... he discarded it? Would it not make sense to attach it and explain why it was meaningless?<p>One of the conclusions is<p>&gt; Forest dwellers and nomads suffer fewer musculoskeletal lesions<p>but then...<p>&gt; Arabs in the Sahara will sit in the position shown<p>How is the Arabs in the Sahara backing up forest dwellers conclusion?<p>NIH publishing this is odd. At least it was not written by ChatGPT.
评论 #39746971 未加载
评论 #39748888 未加载
评论 #39753447 未加载
评论 #39755757 未加载
talonxabout 1 year ago
Very interesting. The author of the paper is around, at least according to the internet, at 90+ years of age and still practising physiotherapy.
评论 #39741972 未加载
评论 #39746541 未加载
vascoabout 1 year ago
&gt; Forest dwellers and nomads suffer fewer musculoskeletal lesions than “civilised” people<p>&gt; I tried to carry out surveys to collect evidence but they were meaningless, as tribespeople give you the answer they think you want.<p>Could they simply have higher thresholds for complaining?
评论 #39742260 未加载
评论 #39744069 未加载
评论 #39745002 未加载
colloydiabout 1 year ago
More than a few middle-aged westerners would find it impossible to sleep with bent knees owing to a high prevalance of artherosclerosis (I think).<p>Also one of the great pleasures of life is turning over in bed repeatedly during a lie-in. Don&#x27;t know whether it&#x27;s to do with lymph circulation and&#x2F;or detoxifying the brain. More investigation needed!
dsalzmanabout 1 year ago
The interesting point of this article to me is not the positions but the sleeping surface. Due to my newborn I’ve been sleeping on the floor on a thin yoga mat for over three months and my back and joints feel great. The pressure from the hard ground is like stretching while you sleep. Took a few weeks to get used to it though.
评论 #39745489 未加载
contrarian1234about 1 year ago
I love sleeping in the &quot;lookout posture&quot;. I get very restful sleep. However after a couple of days it leads to a lot of pain in my back. I&#x27;m guessing some tendons get overstretched. No idea how to work around it though<p>I should try the reverse with the elbow outward. Seems doable. The Tibetan kneel seems a big too hardcore though :)
评论 #39742357 未加载
flurbabout 1 year ago
When I was 16, I inherited a bit of money. Not a large sum at all, but enough so that I could afford a new bed, a bookshelf and some nick-nacks from my local furniture store. Being 16, I didn&#x27;t exactly put much thought into how kind my new mattress would be to my back down the line, and so I managed to find the firmest mattress known to man.<p>At first, it was hard to sleep on, but I&#x27;m lazy, and so I kept it. That was a good decision. Today, I have a much softer mattress, and let me tell you, I&#x27;m suffering.<p>Whenever I go camping in the summer, where I&#x27;m not in need of any insulation, I usually opt for just a simple, thin, foam sleeping pad, and it works wonder. The first couple of nights it&#x27;s usually quite rough, not uncomfortable mind you, just hard to sleep as it&#x27;s not as superficially comfortable, but after the initial acclimation my back&#x27;s so much better.
评论 #39741761 未加载
评论 #39741802 未加载
jiggawattsabout 1 year ago
Is this considered unusual? I’ve used minor variations of all of these except the sleeping on the shins posture, and I’m from Europe, not some African tribe.
评论 #39741509 未加载
评论 #39742079 未加载
twowatchesabout 1 year ago
I&#x27;m fairly sure the cause of back pain is sitting at desks, not the position I&#x27;m sleeping in.
评论 #39741879 未加载
delichonabout 1 year ago
I bought a very strange mattress six months ago. This isn&#x27;t an advertisement -- I can&#x27;t strongly recommend it -- but it&#x27;s called SONU Sleep. It has a &quot;channel&quot; along the top that you can lower your arm into when sleeping on the side. I got it due to persistent shoulder pain from side sleeping. Gradually I&#x27;ve adjusted to it and am now sleeping better.<p>But that&#x27;s an argument against my usual paleo heuristic: this sure isn&#x27;t how we evolved to sleep over millions of years. I wonder if I&#x27;d sleep well in orbit.
评论 #39745792 未加载
garfieldnateabout 1 year ago
The part about musculoskeletal issues really hits home for me.<p>Can anyone recommend a book or site to learn to diagnose and fix musculoskeletal issues where possible? For example, I&#x27;ve had one leg longer than the other for most of my life, and it has caused my a lot of back pain. I went to a physical therapist and he figured out pretty quickly that the two major pieces of my pelvis were twisted and not aligned with each other, and he had a simple move I could do to crack it back into place (essentially just squeezing a pillow between my legs). Now it&#x27;s part of my morning routine, and I&#x27;m working on hip flexibility and strength as well.<p>But I also get other misalignments and I would like to feel empowered to free myself from pain where possible.
评论 #39784731 未加载
friend_and_foeabout 1 year ago
There are a lot of things that we do that wild animals and wild people don&#x27;t do, and a lot of things they do that we don&#x27;t do. If &quot;do what they do&quot; were a panacea we wouldn&#x27;t be living like this in the first place.<p>They don&#x27;t have access to antiparasitic medications, for example. Another example, they don&#x27;t stare at screens ever. Plenty of our habits are better for us and plenty are worse, and the same is true for them. I&#x27;m sure plenty of habits of all people have trade offs. We have a higher life expectancy. What&#x27;s a better metric for healthy lifestyle than that? It doesn&#x27;t mean everything is better, but it is a good yardstick for determining if we are doing more right than wrong to our health, all in all.<p>So just &quot;this is how it&#x27;s done in nature so we are wrong about how we do it&quot; isn&#x27;t a good heuristic. A dog will lay on something soft given the opportunity.
tejtmabout 1 year ago
@dang please macro expand previous<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18024260">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18024260</a> Sept 19, 2018<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32531484">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32531484</a> Aug 20, 2022
0xbadcafebeeabout 1 year ago
I am a subject of the species Sapiens, genus Homo. Subject is a civilized example of the species. An unfortunate side-effect of being civilized is an encouragement to collect paper, with which subject is to trade for essential goods. The method subject has devised to collect these trade papers involves sitting on a soft yet sturdy apparatus and being bent at an approximately 90-degree angle at the hip and knee joints, and looking at a glowing rectangle while subject taps on a noisy set of squares.<p>Of the unfortunate side-effects of civilization, one is risk of injury. Of the several injuries subject has sustained in this pursuit (including to eyes, fingers, wrists, and elbows) is injury to subject&#x27;s neck. In particular, a musculoskeletal injury of the muscles supporting the head on the spine, due to repeated stress from looking at a downard angle at glowing rectangle, as opposed to looking straight ahead.<p>This injury did result in up to 11 months of recuperation. During this time period, finding a way to rest the neck and head was extremely difficult and painful. After completing several weeks&#x27; worth of paper collection, some attempts were made at recuperation outside in nature. Upon attempting to sleep on the ground, rest was significantly painful and uncomfortable. Thus were attempted many months of trial and error at attempting to find positions with which to rest in a comfortable manner, while allowing the neck to heal.<p>At the end of recuperation, the result of attempts at finding resting positions was quite unexpected. Rest for this subject no longer requires (nor benefits from) pillows when side-sleeping, and back-sleeping is easier, though still not preferable. The explanation for this change appears to be an adaptation in musculoskeletal alignment when sleeping. This subject now acquires a particular alignment of head, neck, spine, shoulder, chest, back, and hips, that keeps any one body part from receiving undue strain. Sleep quality is consistent with sleep quality before injury, with the benefit of no longer needing props to assist in sleep quality.<p>The linked article&#x27;s conclusion appears to be supported by subject&#x27;s experience. Subject additionally notes that a single ear is enough to be alerted to most dangers. When sleeping outside, or in an enclosed cabin, such things as mice, deer, and the occasional canid, do tend to wake the subject, as well as odd sounds such as socks falling off the bed onto a plastic bag, or elastic bed sheet end-corners snapping upwards. Whether non-h.sapiens species are also alerted to the latter sounds with one ear open has not been formally evaluated.
pcrhabout 1 year ago
Amazing demonstrations of casual racism in that article. It reads as if it was written in 1850 rather than 2000.<p>There&#x27;s no plausible reason to suppose that Tibetans or &quot;tribesmen&quot; have more natural sleeping positions than &quot;civilized&quot; (i e. White) people.
评论 #39748023 未加载
kurrenabout 1 year ago
These and other anthropological elements are very well described by Esther Gokhale as the basis of her method (which has been a life changer, at least for me).<p>You can find more on her website or book &quot;8 Steps to a pan-free back&quot;.
itronitronabout 1 year ago
The text referencing Figure 2 seems to mistakenly swap the top and bottom images.<p><i>When the legs are in the reverse recovery position (fig (fig2,2, bottom), the penis lies on the lower thigh and is protected. In this position the Achilles tendon of the leading foot can be inserted in the gap between the big toe and the first lesser toe to help correct a bunion.</i><p>Note that the top picture in Figure 2 shows the Achilles tendon of the leading foot between the big toe and adjacent toe of the trailing foot. I would conclude then that the top position is actually the one that protects the penis.
评论 #39745024 未加载
anonuabout 1 year ago
I will be trying more of these suggested positions. Coincidentally, I had a 5 degree wedge under my mattress to lift my head up slightly to reduce snoring. This resulted in increased lower back pain. Removing it reduced this lower back pain substantially.<p>In some sense, the vertical use of our vertebrae is a design anti-pattern. We evolved from animals that walked on all fours, and vertebrae are much better suited for this horizontal position. This is why we suffer from slipped discs and other ailments that are not common in other animals.
ornornorabout 1 year ago
I wish I could sleep without a pillow but my nose completely clogs if I do. And that’s after surgery to remove a very small part of the bone in my nostrils to widen the passage. The mucosa inside my nose just swells too much and clogs my nose which keeps me from breathing which translates to terrible sleep.<p>Is anyone planning on trying these sleeping techniques? I’d be curious to hear about your experience and if you noticed any difference at all.
ErigmolCtabout 1 year ago
&quot;Pillows are not necessary&quot;. It is but good position in sleep depends on an individual itself. Some people find pillows essential for comfort and proper spinal alignment
admissionsguyabout 1 year ago
To add to the anecdotes, I have been sleeping on a flat rice straw tatami matt (without anything else) for 2 months. It&#x27;s pretty hard and I have bruises on my ribs, but I have way less back and neck pain than before. I usually fall asleep in position similar to Figures 4 and 5 in the paper.<p>The reason I started doing this is that after moving to a new house I bought an expensive memory foam mattress which made my back hurt every morning.
carpdiemabout 1 year ago
It would be interesting to know how the comfort or suitability of these postures is affected by physiology.<p>For example, even the suitability to obtain a deep squat may be affected by things like hip joint geometry: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.otpbooks.com&#x2F;stuart-mcgill-hip-anatomy&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.otpbooks.com&#x2F;stuart-mcgill-hip-anatomy&#x2F;</a>
verisimiabout 1 year ago
Really interesting post. It is also quite counterintuitive - I personally think a lot of people are injured in sleep (including myself), and some of the postures indicated look like they could be very challenging&#x2F;dangerous. Maybe the injuries come from lying on soft mattresses and a hard surface would be better as it provides more immediate feedback of bodily stress..?
评论 #39741495 未加载
Izkataabout 1 year ago
The images for Figure 2 are reversed. Both the caption and the description in the paragraph below refer to the bottom image while describing the top one.
m_dupontabout 1 year ago
I tried some of the positions in this article while trying to get used to sleeping on the floor in an attempt to fix my back pain. These hurt like hell
ano-therabout 1 year ago
This came up on HN a while ago already. I tried it out and found that quadrupedal lying (fig 5) did help my lower back pain.
imperialdriveabout 1 year ago
Excellent read right before shuteye.
btbuildemabout 1 year ago
The Tibetan caraveneers sleeping on their shins is metal af.<p>As a bonus, in that position, the penis is protected from instects.<p>Did that little observation, erm, stand out to anyone else?
评论 #39745186 未加载
评论 #39745134 未加载
评论 #39744988 未加载
frame_rangerabout 1 year ago
Rest and vest brahs, rest and vest.