THE specific BLOG

THE specific BLOG

Is Your Pillow Causing Headaches?

Beep, Beep, Beep!

That wretched alarm clock going on in what seems like way too early of an hour.

Time to get up and start the day.

You get out of bed and instantly notice that your neck is sore and you have a slight headache going on.

Not the start to the day that you were looking for, that’s for sure!

I guess the next step is to try and take some ibuprofen, maybe some ice, essential oils, and get started with the day!

Unfortunately millions of people have this experience every single morning.

So what’s the issue here?!

Think about sitting at work with your head cocked one way for a long period of time, or even sitting away from the TV and turning your head 90 degrees to watch TV even for 20 minutes total. There is no doubt in the world that your neck would be sore if you did either of these. Now while those are just for a short amount of time imagine doing that for 6-8 hours.

That is essentially what’s happening when you sleep in a poor position.

The body is being put into a position that is not neutral for a long period of time every single night. There are a handful of things you can do to help fix this, some simple and some not so simple.  One of the easiest things you can do is get a new pillow. If your current one isn’t providing support for sleep then it might be time to invest in something that will help with neck alignment and not cause so much pain when waking up!

Pillows that are too flat, or too thick can make your neck stiff and sore, and can be the reason you’re waking up with headaches or migraines as well.

The first step in making sure that our pillows are supportive enough for us to have good posture while we sleep is understanding what type of sleeper we are. There are three types: back sleepers, side sleepers and stomach sleepers.

With there being 3 ways to sleep we need to figure out which is best for overall health.  I used to always be a stomach sleeper. I’d be laying in bed with my head usually facing to the left laying flat on my stomach. Pillows were always something that I was really particular about. In fact an experience with a pillow first made me realize the importance of a healthy neck!

I was in Florida for vacation as a kid and I had to use a hotel pillow to sleep. The next day we were going to Disney World so you can imagine how excited I was for that! I woke up after sleeping on my stomach with this hotel pillow and legit couldn’t raise my head up all the way. It was almost like I was stuck looking down at the ground!

I kinda figure it had to have been due to the weird pillow I used the night before so what did I do? I decided to sleep without a pillow and the next day I woke up with no pain and being able to lift my head up like nothing happened!

I realized at this point I needed to have a proper pillow.

After what I’ve learned over time is that stomach sleeping is definitely something that people should not do! Like mentioned earlier if you would sit sideways to the tv and turn your head to try and watch it, your neck would get extremely sore. This is why I do not recommend anyone to sleep on their stomach.

The best way to sleep would be on your back or side. In these positions you are able to keep your spine and neck in a neutral position, or position that the body is supposed to be in. This is where what you sleep on in regards to a mattress and pillow make the biggest difference. When choosing a pillow I always recommend foam. The reason I recommend foam is because it maintains its shape. If you’ve slept with a feather pillow then you know that you’ll start the night with it being fluffed up but wake up with all the pillows to a different part of the pillow. This shouldn’t be a surprise as the weight of your head is pushing those feathers that way! With foam there is no dispersion like that. Now sure the foam may compress a little bit but that is it.

I also like to make sure that the pillow has a contour to it…or a wave like shape.  The reason I recommend this is that it will support your head, neck, and spine the best way possible. The contour will fill that gap between your ear and shoulder when you’re lying on your side. Something else it will do is help keep the curve we are supposed to have in our neck when we are lying on our backs. I’m sure at some point you’ve laid on your back on the ground without a pillow. You can either look straight up and you’ll notice that you start to have a pain in your neck because of that gap between your head and back, or you tuck your chin so that gap is flat against the ground but that also ends up being uncomfortable. Having a contoured pillow helps fix both of these issues while sleeping on your back.

If you ever wake up with a sore neck, jaw, headache and migraines, or anything of that nature then getting a new pillow may do the trick for you! You should be able to go to any mattress store and ask for a contoured pillow…the biggest thing is to make sure your head and neck are neutral when laying on it. There are different densities of foam that you can pick from depending if you want soft or firm (like a mattress), but I’ll leave that up to personal preference. Obviously mattresses also play into effect with all of this but that is definitely more personal preference, all I recommend is that you try and keep your head, neck, and spine in a neutral position while sleeping. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out!

Learn more.

Here are a few more posts on how chiropractic care can help those who suffer from headaches and/or migraines.

Thanks for reading the specific blog.