That comment led me to an entire night researching medical studies on Google Scholar.
I discovered something shocking:
For 8 hours every night, my body was destroying itself.
Here's what was happening:
When you sleep on your side without proper leg support, your top leg pulls your pelvis out of
alignment.
This creates a chain reaction:
Your pelvis tilts to one side. Your spine twists in a spiral. Your sciatic nerve gets crushed. Your hip joints grind against each other.
All night long.
Every single night.
For years.
A 2019 study published in the Journal of Orthopedic Research calls this "nocturnal spinal torsion." Researchers found that 73% of women over 40 who sleep on their side suffer from some degree of this.
And it's invisible to doctors who only examine you during the day.
By morning, the worst damage has already happened. Your muscles are inflamed, your nerves irritated, your joints screaming.
But within an hour of being upright, things improve just enough that when you arrive at your 2 PM appointment, they see nothing wrong.
So they tell you it's stress. Or depression. Or aging. Or "part of being a woman."
But it's none of those things.
It's a mechanical problem happening every night while you sleep.