Why am I moving my legs off the bed while I sleep?

March 23, 2017 10:40 AM

I fall asleep on my side, but recently I've started doing something odd; rolling onto my stomach and moving my entire body down to the end of the bed so that my feet and legs are hanging off.

I've had various issues with sleeping soundly for a long time, but this is a new one; a few months ago I noticed that I was sometimes waking up on my stomach with my feet hanging off the end of the bed, even though I always fall asleep on my side. I used to sleep on my stomach and always liked having a foot hanging off the edge of the bed, so that part wasn't too unusual. What *is* unusual is that lately I've been waking up with not just my feet but also my legs hanging off the end of the bed; sometimes my kneecaps will be at the very edge of the bed. This places a lot of stress on my leg muscles, and means I must be moving 2-3 feet down the bed in my sleep in order to wind up in this position, even though it's uncomfortable; the last couple of weeks it's been uncomfortable enough to wake me up in the middle of the night a few times, and last night I woke up because of this at 2 AM, went back to sleep at the top of the bed and then woke up again at 5 AM in the same position.

Nothing has changed about my sleeping conditions recently - same room, same mattress, same pillows. My wife does spend, on average, 3 nights per week out of town right now, but last year she was away from home almost full-time while she began her PhD and I slept just fine.

I tried searching online for information on behaviour like this, to no avail. To the best of my knowledge I do not have restless leg syndrome, and my wife has never noticed me kicking or moving my legs while sleeping. Has anyone else experienced this, and/or is it indicative of anything?

posted by The Card Cheat to Health & Fitness (16 answers total)

Are you hot an unaware of it? If you already have a foot hanging out then maybe your body is 'following the cool' of your foot and making you poke even further out. Try some lighter bedding and tuck it in tight at the bottom of your bed.
posted by greta simone at 10:50 AM on March 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

I've read that sticking your feet out is a way that your body regulates heat. So I agree that maybe you're running hotter than usual.
posted by politikitty at 10:53 AM on March 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Our bedroom does have crappy electric heating that is difficult to get just right, but I've been sleeping there for going on 16 years, so that's nothing new. If anything, I tend to set the heat on the low side, especially when my wife's not home.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:56 AM on March 23, 2017

Yes, but your internal temperature fluctuates during the night due to your circadian rhythm. So when you get into bed, you're body is X and needs X+y degrees to feel comfortable. As your internal temperature drops, so does the temperature needed to feel comfortable. This can change as you get older.
posted by politikitty at 11:10 AM on March 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

That's weird. Sticking a foot out, yes, but moving 3 feet down the mattress to do it? Weird. Do you take the blankets with you when you go? i.e. if you've trained your sleepy brain that there's fresh air for your feet down there, but you changed to a long blanket that hangs far down the foot of the bed, you'll keep chasing it. Or if the blanket isn't long, maybe your wife is too warm and she's shoving hte blankets down off her shoulders, (or in her absence nobody is holding the blanket down) meaning you can easily carry it with you when you skootch down, meaning and you keep skootching to try to get out from under it.

Try training yourself to stick a foot out to the side of the blanket instead of out the bottom.
posted by aimedwander at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2017

How old is your mattress. My husband started twisting into weird positions in his sleep when our crappy mattress got old and had a huge body shaped dip he couldn't get comfortable in. He would literally try to sleep on the 6" of the mattress between the dip & the edge that was still comfortable. Maybe you are doing something similar.
posted by wwax at 11:32 AM on March 23, 2017 [8 favorites]

I'd also be curious about how you're moving there. Do you keep shifting, or is it one big movement? Are you taking your pillow with you?

I'd suggest setting up something to record you over night if it's at all not too inconvenient. I've been told that while I sleep I commonly will physically push myself into a sitting position, shift my hips, and then "flump" down instead of rolling over from side to side. All while sleeping fine. Are you possibly getting up, maybe even going to the bathroom, and then coming back unaware of having been up and lying forward on the bed? Depending on bed height, if you stand at the foot of the bed, and lazily just lean forward to crawl back in you could end up in the position you describe. Then the question becomes why you're sleep walking.

On preview of wwax, my wife occaisionally wakes up a foot or so futher from the head of the bed; in retrospect I'm usually asked to flip/rotate the matress soon after.
posted by nobeagle at 11:47 AM on March 23, 2017

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone! To catch up on questions:

> Do you take the blankets with you when you go?

Not necessarily, but I do take a pillow. I've never been able to sleep without one.

> How old is your mattress.

We have a memory foam mattress. It's a few years old, but I find it comfortable (although sometimes a bit warm due to the lack of airflow). Doesn't seem to have any significant dips or grooves, but I'll flip it tonight and see if it makes a difference.

> Do you keep shifting, or is it one big movement?

I'm not sure, but I've never woken my wife up doing it, so I'm guessing it's a series of movements instead of one dramatic one. But I can't be sure. I doubt I've been sleepwalking, because I usually remember getting up to go to the washroom or whatever.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:56 AM on March 23, 2017

Since you fall asleep on your side but often wake up on your stomach, we might guess that on some nights you go through a cycle of moving from your side to your stomach and back again several times without waking up.

Assuming you are somewhat jackknifed on your side but more or less straight out on your stomach, there could be an asymmetry in the way you go from one position to the other such that you move both your upper body and your legs toward each other with respect to the bed when going from your stomach to your side, but mainly straighten out from your shoulders down as your elbow digs into the bed as you turn over from your side to your stomach.

That would cause your feet to move further down than they were the last time each successive time you turned onto your stomach. So mornings when you woke up with your feet more off the bed would correspond to nights during which you went back and forth between your side and your stomach more often.
posted by jamjam at 12:48 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I do this when the temperature in our bedroom gets "too cold" for my sleeping self. I wriggle down lower and lower, trying to find the warmer part of the bed, and - not finding one - I keep on going*. I've never gotten so far that my kneecaps are hitting the edge of the bed, but certainly mid-calf (very uncomfortable). I sorted it by wearing warmer jammies, and - when expecting a particularly cold night - bringing an extra fuzzy blanket under the covers with me, which sleeping-me will cuddle and curl myself around rather than wriggle-wriggle-wriggle down-down-down. Maybe you're feeling the cold more lately? Especially without your lovely wife at home to help warm the bed?

* I know this seems counter-intuitive, poor chilly feet & bits of leg sticking out of the bottom of the bed, but I've found that sleeping-me doesn't seem to realize this, and I wake up shivering.
posted by pammeke at 1:15 PM on March 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

I do this too... I love sleeping on my stomach but it puts pressure on my low back to lie facedown unless there's a bolster or pillow under my ankles (like on a massage table) or my feet are hanging off the edge of the bed. It has nothing to do with being too warm for me, though I agree it is a nice way to vent some heat out as well. But yeah, maybe in your sleep your body is just shifting around to a position that puts your back in better alignment.
posted by cristalina at 2:10 PM on March 23, 2017

I do this sometimes, and it seems to be when I have tightness in my feet/ankles. Temperature regulating, one foot out the side; ankles/feet are stiff, feet hang off the end of the bed.

It also sometimes happens when I have tight *shoulders* - I stretch my arms up, they push against the headboard, which in turn pushes me down.
posted by okayokayigive at 3:18 PM on March 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Maybe it could be a blood pressure issue? Intracranial pressure increases when lying flat, and perhaps this shifting is your body trying to position itself in a degree in which the feet are closer to the floor, lowering the lower body's elevation. In this case, extra pillows to keep your head and upper body elevated could work. But this is just a far-flung hypothesis and I have no medical training. Consider a sleep study as well if this keeps bothering you.
posted by wilywabbit at 5:31 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I do this when my shoulders are tight, too -- stretch up, push against the wall, slide down into the bed.
posted by sarcasticah at 6:35 PM on March 23, 2017

As a stomach sleeper, I do this on purpose before I fall asleep. It gives my feet somewhere "to go". Otherwise I have to twist my knees, hips and/or ankles to get my feet to lay flat on the mattress. By sticking them off the end, my toes point down and remain straight, below the plane of the mattress. I find it more comfortable when falling asleep. I never wake up in this position, however.
posted by jindc at 6:32 AM on March 24, 2017

Just want to add a point on this - it's important not to sleep in a position where there will be significant pressure on your legs if your sensorium is clouded. I've seen multiple people either drunk or on drugs who fall asleep with their extremities hanging off something with a hard corner and sustain damage related to lack of blood flow because the pain doesn't wake them up. It sounds like your bed doesn't have a hard bed frame at the end, but this question just prompted me to think of those bad experiences to give you a warning if you ever use sleep aids or drink alcohol before bed.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 1:58 AM on March 25, 2017 [1 favorite]