About one third of a person’s life is spent in sleep, and pillows are a good partner that most people cannot leave.
However, many people have problems with the way they sleep on pillows.
I can’t sleep well at night and feel uncomfortable when I wake up…
Before talking about pillows, let’s look at the physiological characteristics of human head and neck.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
The human spine is not straight and straight, but has four physiological bends, of which the neck has a slightly forward radian, which is called “neck curvature”.
When we lie flat on the bed…
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
See? The neck is supported by pillows.
The pillow is not suitable and the pillow is not right, which will affect the curvature of cervical spine and make you feel worse and worse as you sleep.
Pillows, most people pillow the wrong pillow
Regarding pillows, there are 4 common mistakes:
Step 1: Pillow is too high
Some people like to sleep with higher pillows and feel comfortable.
In fact, high pillows are not carefree.
If the pillow is too high, it will affect the health of the cervical spine, because… you have been keeping your head down passively.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
Step 2: The pillow is too low
Some people like to have a low pillow or a straight flat pillow, which will make the neck overstretched.
If you sleep like this, your respiratory system will be easily affected, resulting in problems such as mouth breathing and snoring.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
Step 3: The pillow is too narrow
This kind of pillow will not harm the health of cervical vertebrae, but its problem is: when you sleep at night, you will change your posture.
If you don’t sleep honestly and the pillow is not wide enough, change it…
He fell off
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
You think you used a pillow, but you didn’t sleep on it at all.
In short, if the pillow is too high/too low/too narrow…
At the end of the night, not only does it not have a good rest, but it may also cause neck stiffness, pain and other problems.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
However, none of the above is the most critical.
Regarding pillows, an important mistake many people will make is…
STEP 4 Use a pillow on your head
This is not a tongue twister.
As mentioned earlier, cervical vertebrae have radians and need pillows to support them.
If you use a pillow to pillow your head when you sleep, your head is comfortable, but your cervical spine loses its supporting strength.
So…
The most critical function of pillows is not pillow [head], but pillow neck!
It is best to support the back of the head, the back of the neck and the back of the shoulder at the same time.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
After considering the height, width and posture, it is recommended that you choose pillows like this…
Three Key Points for Pillow Selection
1. When lying flat, the place where the pillow supports the head is about a fist height (5 ~ 7 cm), and the part supporting the neck is about 3 ~ 5 cm higher.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
2. If you like to lie on your side, the pillow had better be slightly harder. The height of the pillow is the shoulder width on one side to ensure that the pillow can well fill the gap between ears and shoulders.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
3. In order to ensure that the head does not take off the pillow, the width of the pillow should reach a minimum of 1.5 times the shoulder width.
Photo Source: Dr. Clove Design Team
Of course, it’s no problem to be wider, as long as your bed is big enough…
As for the material of the pillow, you can choose a well-shaped pillow, or use a conventional elastic pillow, take out some cotton and other internal filling materials to adjust the supporting force and height, and then add a small buckwheat pillow pad on the back side of the neck to fine-tune the support, so that you can have a good sleep.
Most of the time, people will find that when shopping, they don’t know how to choose. Therefore, we have sent many practical purchase suggestions on the public number Clove Life Research Institute. Click on the picture below to see them.
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