Pillows are an important factor in sleep quality. Your sleep quality affects almost every part of your waking day, so getting the right pillow affects your quality of life.
If you’re looking for the best way to stay in dreamland, getting an adjustable pillow can help! Here’s why you should get an adjustable pillow – and a few pointers to help you choose the right one.
What Is An Adjustable Pillow?
An adjustable pillow can have its filling changed to the needs of the sleeper. You can add more filling to make it firmer or plumper as you like or reduce the amount of filling to make it lie flat against your mattress. While that may seem like a slight change, it does wonders for your comfort.
Comfort can mean different things to different people – and it’s sometimes difficult to imagine yourself sleeping with any other pillow than your current one. To illustrate how much difference an adjustable pillow can make, we have to talk about what makes pillows essential to a good night’s sleep.
How Pillows Affect Sleep
It's easy to think of a pillow as just a place to lay your head while sleeping, but it’s so much more than that. There are four things that a pillow can do for you:
- Maintain good body posture
- Decrease or increase neck pain
- Affect the severity of some medical issues
- Balance out your bed’s firmness or softness
Let’s talk about these four in a little more detail.
Pillows and Body Posture
The proper body posture is important in our waking moments, but it’s even more critical during sleep. When we sleep, the muscles and ligaments in our back relax and heal themselves from the strain of the day. If you don’t have the proper posture, this process doesn’t happen the way it should.
Ideally, your head should be perpendicular to your head while you sleep. If it’s bent too far in any direction, that puts pressure on your spinal nerves, causing muscle strain and affecting your sleep. Sleeping in these conditions can affect your spine, increasing the likelihood that you’ll experience chronic back pain.
Pillows and Neck Pain
You’ve probably experienced at least one neck-related sleeping incident in your life. Neck pain and sleep are closely intertwined, and research agrees that finding the right pillow can minimize or prevent the effects entirely.
While it’s true that age plays a role in head and neck pain, the alignment of our heads during sleep is a more significant factor. If your head isn’t in a neutral alignment (that is, perpendicular to your spine), the muscles in your neck will strain for the entire night.
Pillows and Medical Conditions
Some studies have shown that choosing the right pillow can help prevent common medical conditions like heartburn or sinus problems. Since the alignment of our heads during sleep affects both our airways and gastrointestinal systems, choosing the right pillow might improve the condition of both.
The pillow can also play a role in sleep for people who use sleep treatments like continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for sleep apnea. While some patients can’t afford the specially made custom pillows that can help keep CPAP masks on, getting an adjustable pillow is a great alternative.
Pillows and Beds
Pillows also play a part in how your body aligns when lying in your bed. Not all beds will have the same firmness, especially when you consider things like comforters and sheets. A good pillow can help counterbalance the firmness of your mattress, allowing you to align your spine better.
If you have a firm mattress, finding a soft pillow to compensate for your body’s pressure points. If you have a soft mattress, using a firmer pillow can help keep your head aligned.
So, a pillow isn’t just someplace to lay your head. It’s a crucial part of sleep quality that can affect your everyday life if you aren’t careful.
A Question of Comfort
Most conventional pillows don’t change their elevation. You might think that there’s a certain leeway with pillows since your head weighs it down, but most pillows don’t work that way. Even memory foam pillows will only compact themselves to a certain height and won’t change beyond that.
The truth is most of us sleep on pillows not because they’re comfortable but because it’s what we’re used to doing. The result is that millions of people go to bed with pillows that don’t contribute to good sleep.
That’s why chronic sleep problems are so prevalent. Even if you get the right amount of sleep, your sleep isn’t restful. But, the question is: how is an adjustable pillow supposed to help with that problem?
A Small Yet Impactful Change
The advantage of an adjustable pillow is that it can solve all three of the common issues that sleepers run into without resorting to drastic changes in how they sleep.
Body Posture
Adjusting the pillow's fill allows you to find the ideal position where your head aligns with your neck and spine. This helps relieve pressure on your spinal nerves, relax your back, and avoid tensing up during sleep.
Spending most of your night with an aligned spine also decreases the likelihood of spinal issues later in life.
Neck Pain
Controlling the elevation of your pillow also eases the muscles around your neck. Your neck has a natural curve during sleep, so adjusting a pillow to that curve can help reduce neck pain.
This can also help relieve tension on your shoulders by lessening the load they bear to keep your head at its natural incline.
Medical Conditions
Getting an adjustable pillow can also relieve blockages in your breathing while asleep and allows you to find a more comfortable sleeping position while wearing a mask. It can also alleviate gastrointestinal reflux by holding your head at the proper angle.
The support that adjustable pillows provide can also help ease other conditions like snoring.
These give you deep, restful sleep – an essential process to helping your body recover from the day and prepare for the day ahead.
What Should I Look for in an Adjustable Pillow?
Now you know why adjustable pillows are so good, it’s time to find out what separates the good ones from the great ones. Here are some essential qualities of adjustable pillows:
Breathability
Breathability refers to how well a pillow lets air flow through the material, allowing it to transport moisture and remain dry inside. A breathable pillow will keep your head cool by redirecting body heat away from your head.
The moisture redirecting ability can also help you avoid situations that arise with conventional pillows like discoloration or inconsistent fill.
Proper Fill
Several kinds of fill can be used for pillows, but you rarely get to choose because most pillows have their fill pre-packed. That isn’t a problem with adjustable pillows. So what kind of fill would be best?
The best kind of fill would be the kind that can support your head while still allowing it to sink within the pillow. It has to balance being firm enough to support your head and malleable enough to allow you some maneuvering while sleeping.
Quality Materials
The material is important for a pillow’s comfort level. Choosing the right pillow material (both the cover and filling) gives you a more comfortable sleeping experience.
The material also affects how well the pillow handles moisture and potential allergies. Your pillow can gain a surprising amount of dust and other debris while you use it, even if you change and wash pillow covers regularly. This is crucial for people with allergies.
Durability
Adjustable pillows need to be tough. Since you can change their insides, they go through more strain than conventional pillows, so you need a brand that can last. An adjustable pillow should be able to weather years of wear and tear before it needs replacing.
Since adjustable pillows also shift to different sleeping positions, you need to pick a product that can accommodate large amounts of shifting over time. With the right brand, you’ll always have a comfortable sleep without worrying about the lifespan of your pillow.
How To Adjust Your Sleep with isense
In response to the need for a better pillow for the best night’s sleep, isense made two adjustable pillows that can cater to your need for a restful sleep.
The isense Classic Adjustable Pillow
This adjustable pillow ticks the two boxes that you need from an adjustable pillow:
- The fill: made from spun memory foam polyester cubes with gel beads that cool your head and don’t clump
- The cover: a silky-smooth cotton cover lined with a material that absorbs moisture and dries fast, hypoallergenic, spot clean only
The Classic Adjustable Pillow is dust mite resistant, free from harmful chemicals, and allows you to control your comfort whenever you sleep. Available in Queen and King sizes, it’s an excellent way for you to get the rest you deserve.
The isense Smart Adjustable Pillow
The Smart Adjustable pillow takes everything that the Classic design provides and turns it into a smart way to get a better night’s sleep. This Smart Adjustable Pillow comes with a smart sensor that links to an app on your phone, allowing you to track your sleeping performance.
Charge the tracker for 8 hours, set up the app, and you have three weeks of data that can tell you everything you might have wondered about your sleeping habits, like:
- How long did you sleep?
- How long did it take you to fall asleep?
- How many times did you toss and turn in your sleep?
- Your heart rate while sleeping.
- Your respiratory rate while sleeping.
- Detailed information about your sleep cycle.
It collects and delivers this data in a personal, daily report that you get on your phone each morning, giving you a score of how well you’ve slept.
The Smart Pillow is the best pillow for anyone who’s ever wanted to sleep better. With daily access to your sleep data, you never have to wonder about what’s keeping you awake or the best way to doze off.
Would My Sleeping Position Be Affected with This Pillow?
For those that toss and turn during the night or have different sleeping positions, using an adjustable pillow will not impact the quality of your sleep. Unlike conventional pillows, using an adjustable pillow can also account for all the different sleeping positions, giving you unparalleled flexibility and comfort.
This flexibility becomes even better when you factor in the sleep-tracking capabilities of the isense Smart Pillow. You don’t need several nights of trial and error to find the best way to set your adjustable pillow. With the smart sleep tracker, you have access to all the data you need by the time you wake up.
Adjustable pillows don’t discriminate between back sleepers, stomach sleepers, or side sleepers. Whatever your sleeping position is, adjustable pillows will always be the best pillows for you.
Wrapping Up the Connection Between Pillows and Sleep
Getting a good night’s sleep is essential to your well-being, and getting an adjustable pillow can help you attain a restful slumber. Good sleep means better health, and that’s something everyone can always use a little more abundantly.
