Most of us enjoy our sleep, and often we don’t even want to get up in the mornings. Our bed is a warm cosy place to be and we spend around a third of our lives sleeping but the strange thing is that many of us don’t give much consideration for our comfort when we are in bed. We happily spend hours deciding on other purchases (fashion, televisions, cars, computers, cameras etc) but when it comes to pillows we just pick one up almost as an afterthought, maybe we think that a pillow is just a pillow and that anyone or even the cheapest one will be just fine, but if you stop and think about it this should really be one of your most important purchases.

Your pillow provides comfort and support. If you don’t choose the right one or you don’t replace it often enough then you can be creating a host of problems that just creep up on you without you even realising that it is your pillow that is the cause of the problem. The following are just some of the issues relating to using the wrong pillow or a pillow that is just no longer doing what it is supposed to.

Posture – We use a pillow because without one we cannot sleep comfortably. The reason that we would be uncomfortable without one is that if we just lie down flat on the mattress our head is tilted at an angle that causes discomfort. Our neck is being strained and is out of alignment with our spine. Our heads are actually quite heavy and there is of course only our neck to support it. A pillow raises our head to a point where our neck is in line with our spine and the pillow supports the weight of our head. Using a poor pillow or a worn out pillow can be as bad as not using one at all.

Snoring – If our necks are at an awkward angle to our spines when sleeping then our breathing can become restricted due to the windpipe being narrowed sometimes resulting in snoring which in itself can disturb our sleep (and of course our partners sleep).

Dust Mites – An old pillow is almost certainly home to dust mites. These tiny creatures require a food source and moisture to survive. The food source is the tiny particles of skin that we shed at night from our face and heads. Our perspiration and saliva soaks in to the pillow not only discolouring it but also creating mould and bacteria. This bacteria helps the dust mite to digest their food. Once colonised by dust mites they spend their entire lives in the pillow, breeding and dying in there. Over a period of time the pillow contains more and more dead and living mites. This on its own is not a very pleasant thought but additionally a growing number of us are allergic to the waste products of these mites. Every time we plump up that pillow and sink our head into it an invisible clouds of these waste products is pumped out right under our noses. Symptoms of allergic reactions include coughing, sneezing, snoring, red and puffy eyes etc. If your pillows don’t have dust mite proof protectors on them then they need to be replaced more often (probably once a year).

So how do you choose the right pillow for you?

The first thing to understand is that buying the cheapest pillow that you can find is the wrong thing to do. The cheapest pillows are cheap for a reason. Either poorly made with low volumes of filling that will quickly stop working properly. The pillow might feel absolutely fine in the shop but within weeks it will probably be flattened out and offering little or no support at all. Its like comparing a cheap deckchair with a comfortable armchair, they both provide somewhere to sit but you would not want to sit on the deckchair every night, it would become uncomfortable and eventually break. The same thing applies to your pillow, try to spend as much as you can afford and don’t be taken in by a quick feel of the pillow in a shop. If it is cheap it will be cheap.
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If it costs less than a tenner then don’t be tempted, surely £10.00 is the minimum your sleep deserves for the next years worth of sleeping. If you can afford more then spend more.

There are different kinds of pillows out there; the following are the main types you will find.

Synthetic Fibre Filling – A cheap pillow will almost certainly have a synthetic fibre filling but this does not mean that all synthetic fibre filled pillows are cheap or that you should not buy one with this filling just choose the right one. The synthetic fibre used in pillows is usually referred to as hollowfibre or something very similar. This makes a great filling for a pillow it is soft, it is usually washable and is comfortable to use but it needs to have a good level of filling, if it does not have enough filling it will flatten and stop providing the right level of support. Some better hollowfibre filled pillows are treated with an anti fungal process that stops mould and bacteria and therefore makes them impossible for dust mites to live in (for a year or so anyway until the treatment is washed away and ceases to work).

Memory Foam – Memory Foam Pillows are often sold as a solution to head and neck pain but be aware that even the very best memory foam pillows are much firmer than any other kind of pillow. If you like a firm pillow then great but if you like yours to be soft then memory foam is probably not for you. A memory foam pillow does a great job of keeping your neck in alignment with your spine but once your head is in place there is little other movement available. In essence you will either love them or hate them.

Feather/Down Fill – This type of filling can cause confusion because most people’s perception of a feather is of softness but feathers should not be confused with down they are very different from each other. Feathers have a hard central spine called the quill, a feather pillow will have some quill content these can sometimes be seen or even felt through the cover. The more feather content the pillow has the more quill content there will be as well. Down is a small curled very soft feather that sits underneath a bird’s true feather. Down is very soft and the best, softest down comes from colder climates such as Hungary, Poland and Canada. Down is much more expensive than feather and therefore a high down content pillow will cost more to buy than a high feather content pillow. Many pillows have a mixture of the two and will specify the content mix as for example 80% Down/20% Feather.

In conclusion spend as much on a pillow as you can afford, you will get more filling that will provide more support and better comfort and will last longer. The pillow needs to have enough filling to raise your head in to line with your spine once it has been compressed by the weight of your head. The softest most supportive pillows will have either high quality/high volume hollowfibre fill or a high down content fill. The firmest pillows are memory foam, very supportive but very firm. Finally always remember to use a pillow protector to avoid stains and to keep dust mites at bay.

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Tags: Dust Mites, Hungarian Goose Down, Memory Foam, Pillows