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Comment by todd3834 | Hacker News Reader

Last night I was thinking about why some people are fine and others are not. I had a random thought that is probably nonsense but here it is: when I get a cold I noticed that if I sleep on my back the mucous all drips down my throat and I end up with a chest cold too. Once I determined that it could be related I never sleep on my back if I am sick. I have literally not had a cold move to my chest since. I started wondering if anyone had done studies on sleep position with sickness and maybe Covid to see if there is any correlation.

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That was an early lesson in the pandemic: admitted patients sleeping on their bellies had a higher survival rate.

Yes, but for very different reasons. Admitted patients were frequently at the point of difficulty breathing. When lying on your back, gravity makes your lung capacity smaller, when on your stomach, gravity makes it larger.

The increased survival was simply due to getting more air at a critical time.

When sleeping on your belly, doesn't your back "push" on your lungs? There's then more mass to compress your lungs than when sleeping on your back.

That would make sense. I wonder if, laying on the stomach is actually freeing the phrenic nerve, allowing the diaphragm to work better, and therefore providing more oxygen.

Oh, there are many reasons. This is what makes medicine interesting, I guess. Think of the Scott Alexander article from yesterday: Ivermectin works pretty well... because it rids you of parasites which may act when you have severe Covid and are put on immunosupressors.

For some reason the virus also plays havoc with your blood sugar, so having even slight diabetes is a huge risk.

I was talking with a Covid nurse a couple of weeks ago (female, small thing) and she said a big part of the reason she's changing jobs is... the size of the patients she has to move around. Obesity is another huge risk factor - whether through diabetes, independent, or both.

I’m prone to severe micro clotting. (Factor 5) I’m so sensitive that I have visual changes and one sided numbness 24-48 after going off blood thinners.

I had my dosage and timing down exactly to the minimum of what I needed to not have symptoms.

When I got covid I found I had to double up blood thinners for about six months to keep symptoms under control.

The second time I got covid I didn’t have to adjust anything.

So my option is tiny clots is a major part of covid, and some people are more sensitive then others.

Blood clots are a common problem in COVID-19 patients.

https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/lab-report/new-cause-of-covid...

Do you sleep on your stomach, or does it work sleeping on your side too?

I'm another Todd that does the same thing, and I too have noticed that I no longer get chest colds.

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