Sleeping on the floor is not like getting an 8-hour massage

Jonathan Jarry (and yours truly, highlighted) for the McGill Office for Science and Society:

Chiang claims that the ground ends up massaging your body as you sleep, that all of the tensions we have accumulated get released when we sleep on a hard surface, a claim which many floor-dwelling YouTubers repeat. I found this hard to swallow, so I reached out to a former massage therapist, Paul Ingraham, who debunks musculoskeletal myths on his website PainScience.com. “I am confident that no one has ever asked a massage therapist for a treatment that feels just like sleeping on the ground,” he told me. “Firm, static pressure on a few spots does not remotely resemble any kind of massage, let alone a good one.” While there are specific spots on the body that feel particularly good when massaged—the back of our skull, the patch just below the elbow on our forearm, the little triangle at the top of each butt cheek—none of them would be massaged by contact with the ground, he continued.

Related to this claim is the bold affirmation that when we sleep on a mattress, its softness allows us to remain stiff and tense. Contact with a hard floor, however, is supposed to allow our body to fully relax. This is the exact opposite of common sense. Ingraham tells me, “This just seems like misguided and muddled ascetism and sadomasochism, based only on the vague idea that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.” Indeed, I have also heard the assertion that sleeping on the floor strengthens your body, that building up a tolerance for pain is good. Research into mattresses, however, shows that extreme firmness is generally not desirable.

I enjoy the comments when I shared this on Facebook. My favourite:

"If they want to sleep naturally, they should go sleep in the woods naked. Way, way out in the woods."

That’s some premium snark there.