| Looking at your average pillow, you'd be tempted | | | | causes "heart burn" to rise up from the stomach |
| to think most pillows were like it. Just off square. | | | | during the night and wake the patient or give |
| Soft. Filled with plastic foam. | | | | them an interrupted, unsatisfying sleep. |
| Far from it! The pillow would have to be one of | | | | Or take the body pillow. This is a long tube of a |
| the most diverse items of comfort and furnishing | | | | pillow, bent and curved in a number of different |
| in the average home. Because far from having a | | | | ways. The sleeper will lie their head on one end, |
| dominant shape (that 20"x26" shape you probably | | | | and wrap and rest their torso and legs around |
| went to sleep on last night) modern pillows come | | | | other parts of their night-time "companion" to |
| in a big range of shapes AND sizes. | | | | support themselves in a way they would not be |
| Much of this is driven by medical advances. As | | | | able to without a pillow. This is much more |
| doctors and trainers have increasingly understood | | | | effective than, say, slipping a standard pillow |
| more about our bodies they have seen | | | | between one's knees or ankles to give support |
| advantages in using pillows to support patients in | | | | and needed rest to those areas. Because a |
| new ways. | | | | separate pillow will tend to move around and drift |
| So we have wedge pillows, for example. They | | | | away during the night. The patient will have to |
| come in several sizes and although the basic | | | | wake up sufficiently to reposition that pillow to |
| shape is, as their name implies, a triangular wedge | | | | give themselves the uninterrupted support they'll |
| shape, this can be varied. The wedge pillow is | | | | get from a body pillow. |
| design ed slip easily under the sleeper's shoulder | | | | And then there are neck support pillow, |
| and gently rise up to a point higher than the | | | | buckwheat pillows, and back support pillows. Many, |
| average "standard" pillow would lift the head. They | | | | many different types of pillow. |
| are used to stop the uncomfortable material that | | | | |