How Do I Get Rid of My Back Pain?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
Podcast episode by JJ Virgin addressing causes and solutions for waking with lumbar (lower back) pain. The episode includes sponsor ad reads (Earth Breeze laundry sheets; Wayfair home decor; Monarch budgeting app; Pacifico beer) and an expert answer from Dr. Peter Martoni emphasizing that poor daytime posture ("tech neck") and improper sleeping position reduce the cervical curve, which can cause psoas spasm and lower-back rotation; he recommends a "neutral sleeping position" (lying on the back with legs straight, arms by sides) and using a pillow that supports the neck (not just the head) to restore the cervical curve and relieve lumbar pain.
Questions this episode answers
The "neutral sleeping position": lie on your back with legs straight and arms by your sides; use a pillow that supports the neck (not just the head) and arch the neck over the pillow to restore the cervical curve.
Chapters
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How do I Get Rid of My Back Pain? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Neil Patterson from email asks I have frequent problems sleeping and I wake up with lumbar pain. How do I get rid of this back pain? Hey, it's JJ and I've got the sleep expert Dr. Peter Martoni with me to answer this question. Now he's known as Dr. Sleepwright, but when he's not sleeping, he is out having crazy adventures. You might say he's even a bit of an extremist. He skydived regularly, mountain bikes, and has rock climbed all over the world. And bonus points to you if you can detect where his accent's from. He'll be right back to answer this question.
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Back Pain Wow. A lot of people get back pain, especially when they sleep. And it doesn't start there, it starts when you're awake. And let me explain, your body follows where your eyes go. So what that means is is we in our modern day lifestyle tend to be on the phone all day long. We tend to be on computers. We tend to drive our cars. This is called Tech Neck. What ends up happening is because of our forward head posture, reinforced by our poor sleeping positions, it causes us to lose the cervical curve in our spine. And then what ends up happening is, is there's a muscle through your stomach called your psoas major muscle, and your psoas goes into spasm because you've lost the cervical curve in your neck, causing a lower back rotation or causing your lower back to twist. So in order to start working on getting rid of your back pain, you need to change your mold. You need to start to improve the cervical curve in your neck. And you do that by changing your sleeping position. And you change your sleeping position by adopting what we call the neutral sleeping position. So what that is is that sleeping on your back with your legs down, with your legs straight and then your arms down by your side. And more importantly, it's how you use your pillow. You want to make sure that the pillow does not support your head and it's the pillow supports your neck. And then by lying on your back and arching that neck over the pillow, you start to restore that cervical curve in your neck and you'll start to pull out that rotation in your lower back. So if you want to wake up with less back pain, then you want to make sure that you change the way that you sleep.
This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.
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