Shoulder Pain While Sleeping

As I've gained size over the years, I've noticed an increasing amount of pain in my shoulders when I wake up in the morning. To add to this, I recently mangled my right infraspinatus...adding to the discomfort. My doc gave me anti inflammatories and I take one before bed each night, but still I wake up sore.

Anyone have any good ideas on how to sleep to avoid this? Different pillow? Mattress?

ps. Can't sleep on my back as I snore like a MF'er and the beating I'd get from my GF while sleeping would be worse that the should pain.

This past month I realized my shoulder issue was due to the way I sleep. For pretty much ever I've been sleeping with my arm underneath my pillow and below my head. Then I started to feel a pinch in my shoulder and couldn't raise it, so I stopped sleeping that way and the pain was gone. I also did some rotator cuff exercises to help, such as internal and external rotations, I think those helped too. So yeah I'd say just try and keep your arms to your side (maybe you already sleep that way I don't know) when you sleep.

Thanks for the input. I sleep kinda the same way you described...and sometimes half on my side and half on my stomach with one arm under the pillow and one on top. Just find it hard to to put the arms to the side when laying on my side due to my mass. That puts a lot of stress on whichever shoulder my body is laying on. Hmm....maybe it's still better than arms up.

Man, I'm actually just recovering from sleeping with my arm over my head over a month ago.

I've also treated a lot of patients who irritated their shoulder the same way.

The only way to prevent this from happening is to NOT sleep with your arm under or over your head. Doing so simply impinges this delicate joint during the night and causes quite a bit of inflammation (and pain).

Best,

night arm pain / numbness is possible impingement, because there is a nerve that runs through there. It's easier said than done, but if you can sleep with your arms lower than your shoulders, it will probably help. At one point, I used a necktie, to tie my hand to my thigh. It messed up my sleep, but it helped.

You should adjust your workouts for impingement problems, because over time that might degrade the RC. Re-hab probably includes stretching in all planes, esp. posterior, and workouts that are more back than pecs, etc. Check out the t-nation.com website for some good shoulder articles, such as Shoulder Savers.