
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?
