Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist. Brad Heineck, physical
therapist. Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet, in our opinion of course. Today Brad we're going to talk about the best type of pillow for
sleeping with neck pain. pinched nerve, or herniated disc and/or herniated
This is a big problem for a lot of people, they're trying to get a good night's sleep, and the
Pain won't allow them
So we're gonna show you positions and things that you can try. We're gonna give you lots of tips and it's good maintenance
Yeah, prevention as well
Even if you're not having problems you're gonna want to try these things because you don't want to end up with a neck problem
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Alright, so the first thing, we're gonna give you some guidelines. The first thing what you're trying to
do is
We're gonna go over three main categories here Brad. First thing is you're trying to get the neck in neutral.
Yeah let's go over neutral.
It doesn't make any sense, neutral, first gear second gear. You know what I'm talking about. So Brad stands here right now
He's actually got pretty good posture, his ears are kind of lining up with his shoulders
And that's where you want to see him. So here's the shoulder, you can hardly see the ear because
He's got it lined up correctly. Show them incorrectly Brad
Right so at night when you're sleeping
This is the same thing. You want to have your neck in this good position, not in this bad position
And can you see how if you're sleeping on your back
and you use one thin pillow, you should be able to keep in a good position, but if you use two thick pillows
It's gonna push them right forward
Alternatively, if he's on his side, so now we'll face this way Brad, now you can look
again here to have good posture
He wants to be right in the middle but look at the huge gap there
So if he slept without a pillow yeah, he'd be way over and it'd be that stress on the neck all night long
so and
Quite often when you're on your side, one pillow doesn't do it does it, he's still gonna bend in to the side
So we're gonna use two pillows and that's gonna keep him
Just take my word for it, two pillows is gonna keep him in the right position
Yeah
The goal is that neutral position and keep your neck healthy. By the way I read Brad that
70% of people sleep on their side, so it is more common to sleep on the side, so when you're on your side
You're gonna want to come up with a thicker pillow, fill in that shoulder gap
What about sleeping on your stomach Brad?
Well, you know
We're not big fans of it. No we're not. If you're gonna sleep on your stomach the ideal thing would be that you have one of those holes like on a massage table
Then you keep your neck in neutral, but if you're on your stomach
and your head has to be all the way, what we call in end range, it's gonna be there for
that's okay, but you leave it there for a length of time, hours at a time, it could cause problems.
I'm assuming stomach sleepers without knowing it, they probably turn their head right to left
I don't know, but yeah
I don't know how else you would do it. Your head's all the way in one direction
So if you're gonna sleep on your stomach, I'd try to keep it limited
and I would try to use a softer pillow because you certainly don't want to be on your stomach and
bending up like this
Some sleepers don't use a pillow. Oh yeah sometimes they even put their hands there or no pillow at all
I shouldn't say make fun of this
but I could just imagine someone sleeping all night with their head to the right, and then they get up in the morning and they're stuck
Yeah a lot of headaches
occur with people who sleep on their stomach. If you're getting a lot of those neck headaches that may be the cause of it
So that may be something to think about
Tips for trying to get good posture when you're sleeping
One thing you could use
Let's do the towels. Yeah, we've got a number of little tricks
you can do here. Bob'strying to decide which one first.
Oh, okay, so what you can do,
this is just a little thing to try to help keep your neck in place at night. You take a pillowcase and
you fold it in half lengthwise, so
I went this way, I fold it in half, and then I fold it in half again. You do a lot of laundry
don't you Bob yeah? I really got my act together
don't I. And then with it in this position you can just actually take it and put it around your neck
Like this and then tape it in place or pin it in place
Be careful with that pen
Anyway this gives
you just a little bit support, but it helps hold your neck in place at night
We've had some people that like this
I've used this with my people who have vertigo, after I do treatment
and they're not supposed to look down, I
put this around them and it's just a cheap neck collar
Otherwise you got to go spend $15 and you only use it for a day
The other thing you can try is
when you sleep on your back or on your side
there's a little bit of curve in here, so to fill that in you can take a roll towel
First why don't we go the cheap way. Okay, so now if I'm sleeping on my side
I'm on my side like this, and there's kind of a gap here
I can put the towel here
And I can actually slip it in the pillow itself and put it right here
And there it's kind of in place, gives me a little extra support
These are things you try Brad and see if it works and this
For my patients that like it
they know that does make a difference when they have that support in
that neck and I'm sure there's ones that say
I don't like it at all, right? Right or it might be just the size of the roll
Experiment with that too and also if I sleep on my back
And I take the one pillow, look how that fills in that gap really nice Brad
They do make these two, that's a McKenzie one, a Mackenzie cervical roll
They're just more comfortable because the cushion is more consistent, and it feels good
But you know if this works, this is going to work better. Yep. It is softer
Yeah, a lot of times once you put it in the pillow it stays there
Again, it's gonna give support for my neck. I'm gonna mention one pillow. Where are we at Brad?
Nursal, I'll make sure this is in our products below there
It's a memory foam, so it's really nice and soft. Brad and I and his wife, we all tried this and
it's got a zipper so a washable cover cover, and it's hypoallergenic and
Your wife liked this curve didn't she? Yeah, because most of them go straight across
and if you look at it from this angle, there's a dip in here, which then inherently makes that roll.
You don't need a roll there. It's built right into the pillow itself, but this one
also has a spot here, which your shoulder fits into there when you're on your side
And then it's a personal thing actually. It really is. I I liked it sleeping on my side
I didn't like it sleeping on my back. I'm not gonna be one that says go out and get this because
pillows are very very personal
Beyond trying to get your neck in the right position, how much softness or hardness you want or firmness
That's really individual
It depends on your body, it depends on your mattress, if you've got a firmer mattress or
so there's a lot of variables. Did you guys like it or not?
This? Yeah we gave it an A. Not an A+ but an A.
Nice, are you a side sleeper or do you sleep on your back? I'm flopping Bob. Yeah
I like to sleep on my sides, but my back doesn't allow it, so I have to go to my stomach.
So anyway that's the long story. That's the Nursal it's $35.99.
You can give it a try if you think that that's something you want to try. All right the next category
we're looking at Brad, if you're getting pain going down the arm or getting
We got to take the stress off the nerves, so one way to do that is by the way when you're sleeping on your back
You got the thin pillow here and what you're gonna
do is you're gonna go ahead and I would take another pillow Brad and put it right here and support that arm
It just makes a big difference, it really does. It's amazing
what some of these little things can make a big difference like this going around your neck you wouldn't think it makes a difference
But you try and it's amazing, this is another one, and if that isn't enough you might even try to put one by it
beside you and another one here
For some people that's what it takes. If you've got to go to your kids bedroom and take their pillows for your good night's sleep
That's right
Do what you got to do because they're kids and they can take it yeah
They're tough
So the other thing, you're gonna lay on your side, the same thing, I would try to avoid laying on the arm
the nerve pain is going down. You go ahead and you put one pillow beside you, this is the arm
that's giving me trouble, and another one up like this and again to support it. Again
you can almost put two there
Again lots of pillows
I realize, but it makes a big difference if you can, yeah there you go, fold it up in half
If you are gonna lay on the painful side
Which we'd highly not recommend that you do, you could take a smaller throw pillow
Create the canal here and put the arm in here and that gives a little,
it's not as difficult or stressful I should say on it
They do make a sleep wedge with a hole for your arm on this. We have not tried it
But I've seen them on
So we'll have to try those out and give the word on this one. Yeah, all right
The other thing, somebody had asked Brad
how do you watch TV at night in bed or how do you
read a book? So our recommendation on that is
That's the sleep wedge. Google sleep wedge, there's a lot of them that'll come up
That's the one that they have a hole for the arm, too. That's the same.
I'll put this in our products section - these aren't that expensive
But a great thing to do is to just put a pillow like this and now I'm in pretty good posture
But I can read or I can watch TV
Normally, what happens if you don't have this you put an extra pillow or two under your head
Then you get the head forward out of neutral position we've been talking about and it's not desirable. It's not comfortable
and that's the third category we're gonna look at is comfort itself and and
Again, if you sleep mostly on your back, I would probably get more of a medium pillow
not as firm. If you're on your side, I'd get probably a little bit of a firmer pillow
You know I realize there's down pillows, there's feather pillows, there's foam pillows, there's memory foam. There's synthetic
There's a website called sleep like the dead.com
It actually really kind of
Talks about pillows and beds and mattresses, and it ranks them all
So that's a good deal. Yeah, it is
and it's objective right so
All right, I think we were ready to quit, aren't we? I don't know should we stop? We're probably boring them to death
Sleep well is a big thing. Yeah. Thanks for watching. Keep the neck healthy.