Although some people think sleeping on your right side could restrict blood flow back to the heart, there’s not enough evidence to prove that it’s harmful. Sleeping on your right side may be the best option for people with heart failure. If you’ve had heart failure, you should speak with your doctor about any sleeping positions that you should avoid. How you should sleep if you’ve had heart failure Because your liver is on the right side of your abdomen, lying on your left side helps keep the uterus off that large organ and it also makes your heart’s job easier because it keeps the fetus’ weight from applying pressure to the large vein (called the inferior vena cava) that carries blood back to the heart from your feet and legs to improve blood flow to the fetus. Some doctors recommend that pregnant people sleep on their left side. Lying on your side with your knees bent is likely to be the most comfortable position as your pregnancy progresses. Early in your pregnancy, try to get into the habit of sleeping on your side. However, at this time there’s no evidence that sleeping on your right side increases your risk of developing heart failure, and it seems to be safe.Ī 2018 study found that the majority of participants with a heart muscle disease called consecutive dilated cardiomyopathy preferred to sleep on their right side rather than their left.Īlso, a 2019 review of studies found no difference in the health of pregnant people or their unborn babies when sleeping on their left or right sides.
This is the vein that feeds into the right side of your heart. Some sleep experts think that sleeping on your right side could compress your vena cava. There remains some controversy about whether sleeping on your left or right side is better for your heart. More research needs to be done to understand if sleeping on your left side is dangerous for people with heart conditions or how dangerous it may be. The researchers found that in this position, the heart was held in place by the thin layer of tissue between the lungs called the mediastinum.Įven though lying on your left side may change your heart’s electrical activity, there’s no evidence that it increases your risk of developing a heart condition if you don’t already have one.Īnecdotally, people with congestive heart failure often report discomfort and trouble breathing when sleeping on their left side. When the participants slept on their right side, almost no change in ECG activity was found. The changes in electrical activity were attributed to this movement of the heart. Using a type of imaging technique called a vectorcardiography, they found that left-side sleeping caused the heart to shift and turn. In a more recent 2018 study, researchers also found that sleeping on the left side was associated with changes in ECG readings in healthy participants.
The researchers found a more noticeable effect when the participants were lying on their left side. In 1997, researchers first noticed that side sleeping caused noticeable changes to the electrical activity of the heart measured with an electrocardiogram (ECG). However, there’s some evidence that sleeping on your left side may increase pressure on your heart. There’s little research examining the effects of sleeping positions on heart health. Is sleeping on your left side bad for your heart?