If you’re anything like me, you’ll find sleeping in a position other than your fave pose as nothing less than an assault on your identity. I AM a front sleeper; I have tried to change my ways, but no medical fact has been as compelling as the sweet comfort of belly-down kipping.
That is, until I got acid reflux. The painful condition is seriously common ― Cleveland Clinic reckons it happens to “almost everyone” at one point or another. You probably already know that elevating your head while you sleep helps to prevent that 4 AM wakeup-inducing burn, but recently, I learned from Dr. Karan Raj’s TikTok that the side you sleep on matters, too.
The doctor, who’s known for debunking medical myths and sharing health tips on the app, recently reacted to an influencer claiming that lemon juice helped her acid reflux (side note ― don’t do that). In the video, he explained how acid reflux works, and mentioned that the side you sleep on can seriously affect its potency.
Here’s what we found out about the surprising fact:
Your stomach isn’t perfectly central
To explain the process, the doctor put a balloon full of water at the base of an upturned bottle. The balloon was a makeshift ‘stomach’; the water showed its ‘acid’; and the bottle was meant to show the oesophagus. The place where the balloon and the bottle connected, the doctor said, represented “your oesophageal sphincter ― a valve that acts between the oesophagus and stomach to stop the contents of the stomach leaking back up.”
This ‘leaking’ of acid and other substances into your oesophagus causes heartburn, acid reflux, and sometimes even a sore throat (been there).
“If you have a floppy lower oesophageal sphincter, or leaky valve, the contents of the stomach can reflux,” the doctor shared. And after debunking the original influencer’s misguided lemon juice suggestion (TL;DR: further acid does not help the situation), the doctor explained that “the stomach naturally curves towards the left side of the abdomen.”
“So if you sleep on your left-hand side,” the doctor continues, “the stomach and its contents lie slightly lower than the oesophagus.” This makes it harder for the contents to leak into your oesophagus, meaning you’ll have a lower chance of acid reflux.
“By the same principle, if you lie on your right-hand side, at this point the stomach and its contents are slightly higher than the lowest of your sphincter,” he adds. That means “more chance of reflux back into the oesophagus again.”
Dr. Raj suggests that if you suffer from reflux, you might want to avoid lying flat or with just one pillow, too.
“Instead, try using two pillows to raise your head, so gravity works in your favour,” he says. The more you know...
You can watch the full video here: