“A person with the build of a rugby player and a very skinny person should not have the same thickness of pillow.”
Rather thick, memory foam, very thin? Your choices and preferences in terms of pillows really matter and determine the quality of your nights. In any case, this is what Korean researchers suggest in a study published in the scientific journal International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
To find out which pillow is best for rest, scientists analyzed data from 332 adults aged 20 to 76 who answered a questionnaire about their sleep habits: duration of sleep, bedtime, wake-up time, sleeping position, whether they snored or breathed poorly during the night, whether they dozed during the day, but also the parameters related to their pillow (support, comfort, size, shape, etc.). According to the researchers, people who slept on the biggest pillows suffered more from cervical, shoulder, neck pain, snoring and untimely awakenings at night, which significantly impacted the quality of their sleep. A “big pillow” is considered to be a pillow that is (too) thick and (too) firm. The hardness and thickness of the pillow therefore seem essential and must adapt to the position in which you sleep and your build, recommend sleep specialists.
“The ideal is to have a pillow of a thickness equal to the distance that corresponds to the end of the shoulder to the nape of the neck.“, advised Charlène Chéron, chiropractor during a previous interview. So a person with the build of a rugby player and a very skinny person should not have the same thickness of pillow.“You can recognize the right pillow by the fact that it fills the space between the shoulders and the spine. A pillow is not the right size if, when lying on your side, the cervical vertebrae are not in a straight line with the spine, this is what happens if the pillow is too high for example. The spine then quickly becomes curved laterally or hyperextended.
→ Side sleepers should choose a pillow that is somewhat firm and thick enough to fill the space between the shoulders and neck and maintain good alignment with the spine.
→ For back sleepers: the pillow should only support your neck and not rest on your shoulders.
→ People who sleep on their stomach (this is one of the worst positions for sleeping), on the other hand, can sleep without a pillow or on a rather thin pillow that prevents the head from “bending” or stretching excessively.
To find the right height, start by lying on the bed without a pillow. This way, you know exactly how big the space is between the neck and shoulders and how the pillow should ideally be positioned. The researchers also recommend a rectangular pillow (50 x 70 cm) rather than a square one (65 x 65) so that the head is not positioned too high and avoid bending of the neck and spine.