I don’t know for sure, but my anecdote is that my wifes doctor makes her lay on her left side to reduce blood pressure.
hmmm…that’s interesting…all I know is that for some reason, as much as I’d prefer to sleep on my left side, I will ALWAYS wake up on my right side, as if the fetal position I’m in on the right is more natural or somthing.
Most doctors agree, it’s best to sleep on the inside of your body.
My mother always told me that it’s better to sleep on the right side because you don’t put pressure on your heart…
Hey I’ve been thinking of this same thing recently. Does gravity effect how well your blood gets pumped throughout your body? If you’re on your right side, then your heart would be higher than most of your body so perhaps blood flows better. What got me thinking about this is that I recently slept on my back (which I hardly ever do) and my arm that was resting on my chest fell asleep while I was asleep. It took a couple of minutes to get full feeling back.
Can’t find anything in a perfunctory google search, but I distinctly remember reading somewhere that some ancient race (possibly the Romans?) used to manacle their slaves in a way that forced them to sleep on their right hand side, in the belief that this reduced the strain on their heart.
If this is so, presumably the idea was that if you sleep on your right the heart is higher up and therefore doesn’t have to pump uphill. However, this doesn’t make sense to me. Being a closed system, surely the pressure of the returning blood would balance things out?
Why would your heart be higher? I have always been informed that contrary to popular opinion the heart is loacted centrally and is not to the left at all. Is this correct?
This used to be used as a euphemism in boarding schools in England to stop boys fiddling with themselves at night (since most people are right-handed).
Surely that should read: …fiddling with each other… 