Hello, I’m Dr. Bart Patzer here at Austin Life Chiropractic, and one of the things as an upper cervical specific chiropractor, we constantly see issues with people on how they’re ruining their spines with the pillows they’re using. Pillows today make the bed look really pretty, because they’re puffed out, but they work as a spring on people’s necks. Instead of those old pillows of the yesteryears of our grandparents that had those good feather pillows that you can make shaped to fit to anybody.
We’re going to review, one, on what a good pillow should do for you, how you can search for it at the store. I’m going to have Dr. Summer here go ahead and lie down. This pillow is a feather pillow, it’s shapeable. That won’t work for everybody, some of them are overstuffed. What you want to see is the pillow to where it’s raising your head up high enough that your head’s in line with your upper body. In her case, you can probably see her head is drifted or tilted like that. Pillows that don’t fit you to where they stay puffy, that pillow will cock her head like this, and that puts a big kink in the neck like a little minor, miniature scoliosis, but a severe kink.
We need to make sure that you feel that weight of your head right about that midline of your head, right about where your ear is. This pillow, it’s shapeable, so she can raise her head up, and then she can crunch it, and then her head’s resting there like that, where you can see her head is level with the rest of her spine. Many times people will use those contour pillows, there’s all types of them.
Go ahead and raise your head up.
They’ll have a little bump here, a bump here, smaller bump. Some of those pillows work for some people, but we’re all different shoulder widths, and we’re all different head lengths, so sometimes that little bump’s hitting the other side of their head. This is a kid pillow, and we can see this pillow is not thick enough for her, and her head’s dropping down below the midline of her body.
Raise your head up.
If we put her on the edge of it, it’s probably going to be close, where her head’s more centered, she’s feeling more of the weight here. This kid pillow would actually work for her. But if she puts her head in the middle, we can see her head’s dropping down like that. In this case, she’s feeling too much here, so it’s bowing her neck this way. Now, most of the pillows that are those pillows that people have, I don’t have a demonstration here, that are the poly filled pillows, if you folded those, and let them go, they just spring back. Those, for most people, are all going to … Go ahead and lie on your side again. They’re going to feel more of that pressure of their head right here at the top part, so their head will be kinked over like that.
When you’re searching for a pillow, feel if it’s high enough for you, and if it fits you where you feel the support in the middle of the head, and not too much on the front or too much around the neck.
Go ahead and lie on your back.
If you’re a back sleeper, you should feel it cradle the neck, like on this pillow here, it would fit her, but sometimes that little bump on an adult pillow would be here, and it would push her head forward and get rid of the curve in the neck, or ruin the curve in the neck, which is one of the common problems that we see of people today. Hopefully today these tips from Austin Live Chiropractic will give you some of the tools for you to go out and do a great search, whether it’s a feather pillow, Tempur-Pedic, shredded foams, those work great because you can take out or put in as much shredded foam or feathers that you need, if you’re using a feather pillow. If it’s a contour pillow, make sure it fits your head length and it fits your shoulder width.
Thank you very much, we look forward to helping you in the future with other tips.