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Does Sleeping Flat Increase Symptoms?


Machair

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I have recently noticed that if I lie on one pillow at night that I will often feel so much worse in the morning, and will sometimes wake up very symptomatic at 4 or 5am. This can be sweating, heart racing etc. Sleeping more propped up seems to help, but I hate this position as I am so used to lying flat. How do you all sleep and does lying flat at night make symptoms worse by the morning? Has anyone had their cardiologist tell them to sleep propped up and avoid the supine position?

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I cannot lie flat. It feels like I am suffocating, but not by pressure in my chest(I know, sounds odd!). It is a pressure feeling in my upper abdomen that happens. I am going to the doctor later this week to hash out the "compression" feeling in my upper abdomen. SOMETHING gets squeezed when I lie flat or when I sit up straight. And, like everyone else, standing. I end up with the adrenaline feeling, and then comes the heart racing and anxiety, and a feeling that I better shift my body now. If I then roll to my side, the feeling goes away.

I sleep with 2 pillows, and the head of the bead up on about 4" blocks.

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I too feel like I'm sufocating and have actually started using oxygen with my CPAP. It is helping me to sleep better. I have to prop up on pillows too. I tried raising the head of my bed, but that made the blood pool in my legs and feet worse - not good for me. My circulation is so bad that I have to wear compression hose all the time any way. I do have a hiatel hernia along with Ehlers Danlos - varicose veins go along with this too.

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Well, this is interesting! Thanks for starting this topic! I have never assumed my problem with laying flat was necessarily POTS related. I just thought that it was a weird ME-thing. It's interesting to know that others out there are having a problem too. I figured that after I dropped my weight by 26 lbs. this year that lying on my back would get better--but, it didn't.

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Hi -- trick I use to keep me off my back when sleeping.

I need to sleep on my side otherwise symptoms are worse and I've tried everything to achieve this but would always end up on my back. Now I use the trick of tennis balls in a sock sewed onto the back of an old t-shirt. I just put the t-shirt on before bed and it keeps me on my side. It took me a couple of weeks to get used to it but now it's good. I have severe sleep apnea and should be using a cpap machine every night but sometimes I just can't - due to other physical problems. So I knew about the 'tennis ball trick' for people with mild sleep apnea. And applied it to this problem. And it works.

blue

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hi..

I ust got an el. bed. So now I can much easyer rais the head end and the legg end. Both seems to help whit the pots and the sleep. Laying totaly flat is not good for my pots i have found out this last year or so. I have put pillowes under my feet for years , then laying flat whit my head starded getting a bigg issue. So then it was to use more pillowes in that end too. And now I have this superb bed. i am so so happy about it so fare...=)

best of luck

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Interesting to hear so many others express the same thing that I have seen with both of my kids. Both of them sleep propped on pillows and my son has a wedge plus more pillows. Both say that they don't feel good lying flat. One would think that with POTS the flatter the better, but too flat is also uncomfortable!

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certainly for me lying flat is a no-no. i get headaches and a feeling like ive been dangling upside down for too long. i would have a headache all day and feel nausea.

i remember just before i was diagnosed with pots, i woke up without any pillows behind me and i felt like this all day long.

now i have two bouffy pillows under me, although i fall asleep on my side, i always wake up on my back. x

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I have had terrible trouble with sleeping and even lying on my back at all. I have the head of my bed raised but if I tried to lie on my back I'd feel an awful tightness in my chest and throat. It seems like it might be getting a bit better since I started taking oral sodium cromoglicate dissolved in water before I eat. Over the summer I couldn't lie on my back at all and now I can tolerate it here and there, but still sleep only on my side.

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