How Orthopedic Pillows Affect Your Sleep

Peo­ple come and go, friend­ships come and go, there is only one rela­tion­ship that lasts a life­time — the rela­tion­ship with sleep.

Not a day goes by with­out a vis­it from the SNA. For a com­fort­able night, we take so long choos­ing beds and duvets that we for­get about pil­lows. The pil­lows sup­port the 7 main bones of the neck.

In this arti­cle, we will talk about ortho­pe­dic pil­lows that help peo­ple relieve neck pain and, as a result, avoid morn­ing headaches.

Ortho­pe­dic pil­lows come in dif­fer­ent sizes and shapes and serve dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es.

The most pop­u­lar ortho­pe­dic pil­lows are rec­tan­gu­lar in shape (usu­al­ly cor­re­spond­ing to stan­dard pil­low sizes of 20x26 inch­es) and are designed to fill the space between your head and the mat­tress. How­ev­er, not all ortho­pe­dic pil­lows are designed to sup­port the head and neck. Some of them are for legs or back. We will be specif­i­cal­ly look­ing at ortho­pe­dic bed pil­lows designed to sup­port the head and neck…

If ortho­pe­dic pil­lows are designed to cor­rect the posi­tion of your body, then what is “cor­rect sleep?”

It’s real­ly sim­ple: unnat­ur­al twists and turns of the neck and back can cause mus­cle ten­sion and put pres­sure on the nerves and discs of the spine. The spine is best kept straight. Keep your back straight and you may avoid arousal and sleep more sound­ly.

The task of an ortho­pe­dic pil­low is to sup­port your head and neck. Ide­al­ly, it keeps your body in the so-called neu­tral sleep­ing posi­tion. This helps pre­vent unnec­es­sary pres­sure on your discs, mus­cles, and nerves.

“But I slept/sleeped so well,” you say.… A dream twist­ed like a pret­zel on a futon filled with hay and beer cans may have worked when you were 20. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as we age, the soft discs between our ver­te­brae wear down and we become more sen­si­tive to sleep con­di­tions.

Ortho­pe­dic pil­lows help make sleep eas­i­er.

If the pil­low does not sup­port your head prop­er­ly, it is like­ly that you will expe­ri­ence back and neck pain.

1. A pil­low with the wrong thick­ness will place your head too high or low.

If the pil­low is too thin, the neck may tilt down­ward at an uncom­fort­able angle. Con­verse­ly, if it is too thick, the neck curves upward unnat­u­ral­ly. Both sit­u­a­tions can cause pain.

2. A pil­low that is too soft will sup­port your head and neck incon­sis­tent­ly.

Tra­di­tion­al soft bed pil­lows filled with down or poly­ester foam often col­lapse under pres­sure and can­not prop­er­ly sup­port your head all night long.

Also, a soft pil­low will not pro­vide the best lat­er­al sup­port for your head. The soft fill­ing of the pil­low will change shape with the weight of your head and will not pre­vent your head from turn­ing left or right, espe­cial­ly if you sleep on your back. This will lead to lat­er­al twists, which can cause pain.

For bet­ter rest, con­sid­er an ortho­pe­dic pil­low

If your head is kept in a neu­tral posi­tion, the mus­cles in your neck and back will be able to ful­ly relax. The pres­sure on the discs and mus­cles will decrease, and as a result you will get a com­fort­able rest.

In our opin­ion, the most effec­tive ortho­pe­dic pil­lows are:

1. con­tour pil­lows or mem­o­ry pil­low

Con­tour pil­lows (aka cer­vi­cal pil­lows) are most com­mon­ly made from poly­ester foam, latex, or mem­o­ry foam (a vis­cous-elas­tic mate­r­i­al).

They are more effec­tive than tra­di­tion­al soft pil­lows because:

· The unique con­cave shape effec­tive­ly cra­dles your head and neck, help­ing to keep them con­sis­tent all night long.

Sol­id padding allows them to main­tain the cor­rect loft with­out flat­ten­ing out under the weight of your head.

While con­toured pil­lows can keep your head and neck in a con­sis­tent, cor­rect posi­tion, they do come with some draw­backs.

Most con­tour pil­lows are not adjustable.

One of the biggest prob­lems with PU and mem­o­ry foam pil­lows is that they come in a pre­de­ter­mined geo­met­ric shape. They will roll up and fit your head a bit, but they can’t be flat­tened or mold­ed to sup­port a wide vari­ety of sleep­ing posi­tions. Many peo­ple change posi­tions dur­ing a night’s sleep. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pre-formed foam pad is not opti­mal­ly shaped for many of these posi­tions. Usu­al­ly you can­not adjust the thick­ness of a foam pil­low, except for ortho­pe­dic pil­lows with dif­fer­ent bol­ster heights (from 7 to 16 cm). Depend­ing on your body shape, mat­tress firm­ness, and sleep­ing posi­tion, the con­tour pil­low may be too thick or thin for you.

In view of the aboveYou can try ortho­pe­dic pil­lows made of hypoal­ler­genic vis­co-elas­tic mem­o­ry foam mate­r­i­al “Mem­o­ry Foam”.

And remem­ber that ortho­pe­dic pil­lows are med­ical prod­ucts and are sub­ject to dec­la­ra­tion for com­pli­ance with their declared tech­ni­cal and phar­ma­co­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics with the issuance of a reg­is­tra­tion cer­tifi­cate. An exam­ple of a dec­la­ra­tion of con­for­mi­ty and reg­is­tra­tion cer­tifi­cate is below:

In addi­tion to neck pain, ortho­pe­dic pil­lows for WOMEN 1181 and 1182 (avail­able in two sizes: larg­er “55x35x14” and small­er “50x30x12”) and MEN 1166 (55x35x14) with mem­o­ry effect help with:

pre­ven­tion of headache, tor­ti­col­lis;

Unload­ing the spine and nor­mal­iz­ing the tone of the neck mus­cles;

Reha­bil­i­ta­tion after injuries of the cer­vi­cal spine;

headaches, dizzi­ness;

osteo­chon­dro­sis, spondy­lo­sis of the cer­vi­cal spine

Cur­rent­ly, there are not many stud­ies in the world that unequiv­o­cal­ly prove that pil­lows relieve neck pain. But doc­tors often rec­om­mend ortho­pe­dic pil­lows as a rem­e­dy.

Addi­tion­al research is required in this area. In the mean­time, you just have to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent pil­lows and see which one suits your needs.

Con­sid­er the above rec­om­men­da­tions and be healthy!

Sin­cere­ly, Pit­goods