Inclined Bed Therapy

[jewelia]

This is very interesting indeed! Are you able to sleep on your side on the tilted bed as shown in the picture? Or does one need to be lying on their back? Just curious as I would like to try it. I usually start off in the morning a bit slow and gradually improve as the day goes on. I'm hoping this will help with my morning sluggishness.

Thanks for sharing your experiences

[hwebb]

i predominantly sleep on my back. I didn't think to try sleeping on my side as per the diagram! Guess I should try??

Helen

[AndrewKFletcher]

Sewat

Thanks for touching base.

Sleeping with hand above the level of your heart will make your arm go numb, same as standing and having your arm raised above your head.

But it proves one thing for those reading it, gravity supports the nervous system.

Your hubby has probably got used to sleeping with head above his head, something a lot of people do. Providing he recognises this as and when he does it, and puts his arms down the bed as often as he can then the habit will stop.

This happend to my wife and I, thanks for reminding me. I have mentioned it on other forums and think on here somewhere before.

Please keep coming back and let us learn how things change over the months of sleeping inclined.

Don't over tax your body when the nerves start working again, Foreverspring did a hike in the Rocky Mountains, at 68 yrs young,

Best wishes

Andrew

[Algis]

This is something I wonder too since a while.
I only sleep on my right side (like a fetus); knees to chest since as far as I can remember. And I have numbness in my left arm sometimes in the early morning; as much as it wakes me up. Not everyday tho.

[AndrewKFletcher]

Hi

Sleeping on the side is a preference but not required, changing posture is more likely to prove more fruitful over time so alternate between either side and on your back is a good thing.

Can't help wondering whether there is a connection sleeping flat and a build of solutes / toxins in areas related to sinks.

Density of urine increases using inclined therapy which means more salts and chemicals, including metals are moved into the venous return and filtered out by the kidneys into the urine. Experiments with a simple hydrometer proved this beyond a shadow of doubt.

Sleeping head down with feet six inches higher than head (opposite to Inclined therapy) produced near water density urine, in other words the minerals that cause lime scale in toilets remained in our body. Food for thought.

Tilting the spine to a greater angle was done to help people recover from spinal cord injury a little faster, so sleeping on the side achieved this.

Thank you all for deciding to give this a try and put some words on the forum for people to learn more about what can be achieved by altering sleeping angle.

A larger pilot study took place a while back involving a large number of people with ms. One of who is Terri Harrison.

Their posts on a simple message board make interesting reading and will definitely give anyone considering I.T. some insight into what can and cannot be achieved.

Those posts can be read here, not in original format because Inside the web, closed down their site leaving the pilot study without a home.

<shortened url>

[ForeverSpring]

This is something I wonder too since a while.
I only sleep on my right side (like a fetus); knees to chest since as far as I can remember. And I have numbness in my left arm sometimes in the early morning; as much as it wakes me up. Not everyday tho.

Algis, this is my favorite sleep position, too. The numbness in your left arm may disappear after using the inclined bed for awhile.

You may be interested in the following comments I posted in the IBT thread on the General Discussion forum found here:
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopic-6755-120.html

Today marks 6 months of using the inclined bed, and improvements still continue. . . .

Everyone has a favorite position for sleeping. Mine is in lying on the right side, and it has been the only one comfortable for me until recently.

Now I can rest on my back for at least an hour, and not feel any pain or discomfort due to scoliosis or degenerative disc disease. The gentle traction of the inclined bed apparently has stretched my spinal column to this beneficial result.

I can also now lie -- and even sleep -- on my left side for the first time in many years. I used to carefully avoid lying on my left side, because within a few minutes there would be increasing numbness, tingling and pain on that side, along with a lot of cardiac arrhythmia. If I were unfortunate enough to accidentally fall asleep while lying in that position, I would awaken with all of those symptoms highly intensified, and severe spasticity besides. Not so, anymore!

ForeverSpring

[ForeverSpring]

Don't over tax your body when the nerves start working again, Foreverspring did a hike in the Rocky Mountains, at 68 yrs young.

Andrew, you omitted the fact that I trained for that hike for about 2 months. I agree that it is important not to overtax your body when the nerves start working again, but it is equally important to seize the opportunity to improve the improvements!

ForeverSpring

[AndrewKFletcher]

Dear Foreverspring

Thank you for your updates and for helping others to understand how tilting your bed has helped you.

Hopefully more people will join us and engage us with their own updates and your reports should stir up some thoughts about there being more to this simple therapy than one might think.

Really looking forward to seeing how many more people come back and report changes over the coming months.

Maybe a news team might eventually pick up on what is happening here and take an interest. This certainly would stir up a hornets nest with the medical profession and the charities.

Perhaps it might also lead on to the illusive controlled study that doctors are hiding behind as an excuse not to inform their patients about this simple common sense postural therapy approach.

On the Youtube video, the then senior director of the MSRC said "if it works let's get everyone trying it".

Well it is obviously working and why not because I.T. worked before he said it, and he knew it worked! and so did the director before him! And so did Peter Cardy at the MS Society!

It has taken us a few months to show how effective this therapy is for people with ms and the pilot study reports are confirmed by what is happening to people on this forum using I.T.

So let's do what the MSRC said they would and show people with MS that there is an alternative to drugs that is free, non-invasive and can be conducted in the comfort of our homes.

I have had tears in my eyes today thinking about the people this therapy has helped. Who cares whether hidden agendas from people paid to provide help matter more than helping people to get more out of life when you get results like yours?

So many people have said to me it's a miracle but miracles are one off's this is fully repeatable and to prove it here we are again after all these years providing anecdotal evidence for all to see and because it truly is repeatable do these results really qualify as being anecdotal? Do we really need approval from highly over paid non-contributing obstacles?

Or should we soldier on regardless and shame them into conducting their own studies if only to try to disprove that, which cannot be disproved?

Andrew K Fletcher

[happy_canuck]

We inclined our bed two nights ago for the first time. We pulled everything apart and rebuilt the king-sized monster from the bottom up (I will post pictures!).

Two night observations:
- my husband either doesn't snore anymore or I am not hearing it
- my slight morning congestion is gone
- my sleeping position (left side) hasn't changed, although I am trying to keep from putting my hands under the pillow
- getting into bed is a challenge for me -- we are thinking about removing the box spring entirely and using plywood to decrease height (4" higher at head of bed)
- after a few minutes with eyes shut, you can convince yourself you are lying flat
- the ceiling looks a lot closer!

~ Sandra

[AndrewKFletcher]

This is very interesting indeed! Are you able to sleep on your side on the tilted bed as shown in the picture? Or does one need to be lying on their back? Just curious as I would like to try it. I usually start off in the morning a bit slow and gradually improve as the day goes on. I'm hoping this will help with my morning sluggishness.

Thanks for sharing your experiences

Thank's for deciding to test this therapy.

Please come back and share your observations with the forum.

Best Wishes

Andrew

[AndrewKFletcher]

RE: http://www.altmd.com/Videos/Montel-Will ... trick-Kerr



Watched this video from Lora with interest, particularly the mention of compression damage to the nerves, this is something people with spinal cord injuries have to deal with and this compression impacts the nervous system causing more damage long after the initial injury.

So decompression of the spinal column is vital to relieving the swelling, which in turn affects the nervous system.

Titling the bed raising it by the head end addresses this problem by applying gentle traction to the body aligning the entire spinal column. How?

The body is held on the tilted mattress by friction between the skin and the mattress. The body is tilted so gravity dictates that the body is trying to move down the bed but held back by this friction, which means the spinal column is under tension, which means each vertebra is pulled away from the next vertebrae.

This affords the circulation access to re-hydrate the cushions of cartilage between the vertebrae while at the same time repairing the damage to the cartilages.

This will not happen in one night of course but over time this traction has corrected scoliosis in a 12 year old girl with cerebral palsy.

Once the circulation is flowing more effectively, the damaged myelin is either bypassed or repaired. I view this as an injury to the bark of a tree, half of the bark stripped away yet the tree not only survives the ordeal but gradually works a way around the damage and over time the bark appears to flow around the injury healing it.

Inclined therapy should not be underestimated

Best wishes

Andrew K Fletcher

[ozarkcanoer]

Just about 5 minutes ago we inclined our bed with a foam wedge. It is inclined about 7 inches or about 17.78 cm. It looks so high !! I'm very nervous about sleeping at such a slope tonight. My husband is quite skeptical. Is 7 inches (17.78 cm) too much of a slope ?

ozark

[sewwhat]

Andrew thanks for your reply.
Hubby does occasionally raise his hand above his head when sleeping.
I feel silly not making that connection

I sure hope I am able to hike in the rocky mountains like Foreverspring at 68 that is awesome! But I am taking it slow as I start to feel better and just walking on my treadmill 30-60 min a day. I am just so thankful not to be fighting headaches. That has made a huge difference in my life. I wish I had heard of this years ago.

I am glad to hear lying on your side is ok too. I cannot lie on back for long because my back gets "stuck" with my scoliosis. So I just switch sides through the night like you've suggested.

happy_canuck - getting into bed is a challenge for me also.
Our bed was pretty high to begin with and now it feels like I should take a running leap to get into it.
I have a pretty big Labrador who jumps up on our bed and she has underestimated it a few times..poor thing lol
I like the thought of removing the box-spring, may try that.

tc all

[Shannon]

My husband went above and beyond and exceeded my expectations! He took a one inch thick piece of plywood and then took 4 lengths of 2 X 4 amd cut them to graduating thicknesses, i.e. 4", 3", 2" and 1". He attached them to the plywood at equal distances and then attached half of another one inch width piece of plywood on the other side. This now sits underneath our mattress on top of the box spring. The first night I got a little bit nauseous, mostly because of the smell of lumber! I felt like I was sleeping at a Home Depot. Otherwise, I seem to be sleeping fine, and my head feels a little finny the next day. I am assuming this is a good thing? I didn't really have the nausea and headache upon waking before, but so it difficult to judge the positive effects. My hand numbness is almost nonexistant though, but I do take neurontin and some new supplements so again it's hard to say.

*I was wondering, is it still okay to sleep with a pillow? I like to sleep on my side with a pillow above my shoulder to support my neck. Is that alright?

My husband has high blood pressure and sleep apnea, so I know this will be good for him in the long run. He says he is waking up several times in the night with the bed inclined, but we are hopeful that he will get over this when he gets used to it. He likes to sleep on his back, which I hate because it makes him snore, even with his CPAP machine, so I often ask him to roll over on his side so I can sleep.

[happy_canuck]

Shannon,

The good news is after 3 nights, still no snoring from my husband. I even stayed awake for a few minutes listening for the symphony to get started last night and he was breathing regularly with no sound whatsoever. So that is a very big positive for me, no matter what the other benefits may prove to be. I always found it difficult to go to sleep if he had started snoring already.

Good luck!

Sandra