Dr. Beth shares with you one of her favorite pillows for side and back sleepers

We get asked all the time about pillows in the clinic.

“Which is the best one?”

“What's the right one for me?”

Pillows are so important when it comes time for your neck health and to headache and migraine attacks. So today, I'm sharing with you one of my favourite pillows that hopefully will help you improve your neck health and decrease your headache and migraine attacks.

Hi, I'm Dr Beth, osteopath here at Melbourne Headache Solutions.

If you have watched my previous video, then you would know how your pillow can contribute to your headaches and migraines.

When you're a side sleeper, you often need a slightly taller pillow because you need to fill the gap between your neck so that your head isn't dipping down. You need to support your head appropriately. You also don't want too tall of a pillow or else your head will be pushed up. Since we spend between seven to nine hours on average, sleeping, the position that we're sleeping in is very important. Regarding your neck health, the top three joints of the neck are the ones responsible for your headache and migraine attacks. Thus, when it comes to choosing a pillow for slide sleepers, I would recommend The Complete Sleeprrr and it's a therapeutic pillow. These pillows come in a couple of different firmness. Personally, I like the original firmness. I think that it is quite a nice type. It might be quite a firm pillow than what you’re used to but that's because it's a supportive pillow. So that your head isn't going to sink into the pillow and it is a memory frame pillow. This pillow is a contour type. It's got the wave in it, it's got deep in it, and it also does have a high side, and it's got a low side as well.

In regard to pillows, there isn't usually one pillow that fits all people because you're different to the next person. You're different to me. Some people have broader or narrower, and some have longer necks. Thus, one pillow doesn't fit all people.

With Complete Sleeprrr having a tall side and a shorter side, this is good because it adapts to more people. The other thing with this pillow is that it is actually adjustable. If you remove the outer casing, you will find two foam inserts inside it. We've got a tall side, a low side and two foam inserts. That's why I really liked this pillow because you can adjust it, mould it, shape it towards you so that it actually is more likely to fit more people, which is fantastic.

You know you have the wrong pillow when you're waking up in the morning and you need a stretch. You feel like you might need to crack your neck. If you wake up to a headache but then after about half an hour of moving around, it starts to feel better, then it means you've got the wrong pillow. Again, if you're sticking an arm underneath the pillow, a hand underneath, scrunching it up, you're tucking forward, you start off on your side, but then you end up on your tummy, these are signs that your pillow is too low for you.

Again, we never want to do stomach sleeping. It puts way too much pressure through the neck and we're creating dysfunctions through the neck. It’s going to promote headache and migraine attacks recurring again and again and again and again. And we don't want that, obviously.

An important thing to remember is that you do need to change your pillow fairly regularly. You shouldn't be using a pillow any longer than about three years or so. If you've got a therapeutic pillow, it lasts for about three years or so, but if you've just got a regular pillow, then you want to be changing it every about two years or so. The number one reason for this is that you do compress them, and they do get worn out. In this case, it's not supporting you the way it should be. Another thing is that you got to think about how often you're using it. The fact that we don't wash them and the fact that we do drool overnight (yes, we actually do although we don’t want to talk about it), we need to replace them so that they are doing the maximum benefit for us.

Hope you find this one useful. Any questions? Give me a shout and I'll catch you next.