What Your Pillow Says About Your Pain

Your pillow is a make or break factor in neck pain

Is it possible to injury your neck while sleeping? The answer is absolutely yes, and it happens more often than you think. While anyone is liable to sleep in a slightly off-angle and wake up with a stiff neck, it’s a different story when you are sleeping on the wrong pillow. With the wrong pillow, you could be:

• Increasing spinal pressure
• Encouraging or compounding spinal misalignment
• Flattening or accentuating curves in the back

It is hard to quantify how much benefit your neck receives when you have just the right pillow. But we can say, from a chiropractor‘s perspective, that a properly fitting pillow is essential for maintaining spinal alignment and preventing subluxation and spinal degeneration.

Choosing the right pillow is an art

Take a few moments tonight to determine if your pillow is helping or hurting your spine. You should be able to tell fairly quickly if your pillow is forcing your head and neck into an unhealthy angle, or if you are falling through a pillow that does not offer enough support.

• Back sleepers should seek a thin, firm pillow that maintains alignment of the neck with the rest of the spine. Make sure you lay your head all the way on the pillow, so there is no gap between pillow and shoulders.
• Side sleepers should seek a thicker pillow, that accounts for all of the space between your head and shoulders as you lay on your side.

The average human spends up to one-third of their life sleeping. That means that the equipment you use to sleep- pillows and mattress- are extremely valuable investments.

Resolving pain to sleep better in Ramsey

At Family Chiropractic and Spinal Health Care Center, we value sleep as a cornerstone of wellness. If you are not getting the sleep you need due to back, neck or shoulder pain, give our office in Ramsey a call to schedule an appointment today. Our natural modalities help reduce pain and boost circulation, both of which make you feel more comfortable so that you can get the rest you deserve.