 Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist, and I'm Brad Eintik, physical therapist. And today we're going to talk about is pillows, the right and improper use of pillows. And as you can see, Bob, he is doing some reading, has a lot of people well doing bed. He's got the pillows propped up so his head is out so he can easily read the material. And this is absolutely a big no-no, according to the physical therapists as we both are. And Bob, what are you doing? What are you reading, anyway? I'm reading a canoe trip, I'm planning on going on. Yeah, you shouldn't go on those anyways, it's part of your back. So let's talk about your neck. First of all, look at his neck. The angle right here is got nice posture, his back. And we put this neck up at about 45 to 50 degree angle, putting a lot of stress at C7 and C6 and also at T1 where the vertebrae comes together. There's a lot of nerves, a peripheral nerves coming out there. Just a great way to injure your neck if you do this for long periods of time. So this is not the posture you want to go over. What we're going to do now is go over different pillows. The proper way to position yourself with pillows to minimize your potential for neck shoulder as well as headaches. Well, the goal that we have when we're trying to establish a sleeping posture is we're trying to keep your head in the neutral position. And what is that? Very simply, if your head is in the neutral position, and right now my head's in the neutral position, it's neither to the right or to the left. It's right in the middle here. So if you're sleeping on your side, we'll talk about this. You're going to have enough pillows there to maintain that you're not either this way or this way. You're right in the middle. And if you're sleeping on your back, you see this, Lindsay? Yep. You're not going to be forward like I just was or your head's not going to be back. It's going to be right in the middle. That's the neutral position. Now on that Bob is established in terms of neutral position with your head. That's what we want to maintain in our posture while we sleep or lay down. First of all, I want to talk about these three little pillows that you have on the typically in the couches or in furniture in the living room. They're nice pillows, they're firm, but usually they're not good to lay on because they're too thick and they're too high with the exception of possibly sideline. Okay, let's take this bed pillow off. Now if you are laying on your side, particularly in the living room floor and you watch and TV, this is an exception. This is where you get this pillow in here. And like this one, I would probably go like this and keep that neutral position. Okay, and I'm not going to get it so high on my neck because I could just button right there. Okay. Now, it's a typical bedroom pillow. And let's go right to the sideline whether it's on the living room floor or in bed. The rules are the same. Right now, if I'm here, you can see my head is angled down. I can feel that. I'm not comfortable. I can tell it's not a good position. You fall asleep like this. It's good way to start getting a neckache, particularly. So you simply take the pillow, full it and have much better. A lot of this stuff, you already do, is this your body tells you to do that because it feels better. Okay. Now, if you take the pillow like this and you lay in your back, that's just about right. It's going to keep my head in a neutral position. Okay. And I'm not going to do this. Okay. If you're going to read a book, make sure you get your whole body up and not just your neck. Like, the cloud was before you. So this is an ideal pillow to maintain that while you sleep on your back. Okay. So one thing that I find with people that have come in with existing conditions, neck aches, shoulder problems, and oftentimes leading to headaches is we need to modify their pillow. Okay. So, let me give it my... So the product from the original McKenzie cervical roll is what it is. That's a really nice product. And you simply put it right here and it fills in the gap. Now, you can use this laying on your side, put it here, and you want a little support at the base of your neck. That's what we're looking for, a therapeutic support. It's a little different than what I was talking about. So there, and you keep it there when you're laying on your back. And what I tell my patients is, make sure you adjust it and usually towards the bottom of your neck, as work feels most comfortable. You put it to work feels most comfortable and takes away that pain that's keeping you awake. Okay. And now, in the last few years, there's these pillow, what do they call again? Memory foam. Memory foam, this is that. I don't know. Okay. The irony. So, what these memory foam pillows are nice, because they actually have a shape that dips down. And there's a lot of gimmicks out there that they'll mark it as far as the footwear and pillows and whatnot, but this is not a gimmick. This is a legitimate, useful pillow that can be therapeutic and help prevent problems in the future as well. Okay. So, at the same concept with a cervical roll, you have support here that's going to be at the base of the neck and allows the head to drop in here so that you maintain that neutral position. The other nice thing about this is the, what the name suggests, memory foam. You can push into it and as you come out, it comes back to where it was all the time. It makes a very comfortable position. And on this, you can see that this is thicker on this side or on this side than this side, the thickness there. Now, that will vary depending on the size of a person. A larger person will put the thicker end towards them, smaller person with a smaller frame would go this way. I'm going to keep it this way for myself. And again, you get it right up there and your head fits in there very nicely. It's a wonderful product. And you know, like this, it is nice. I think I'm going to take it back. So, anyways, that's the memory foam cervical tight pillow. So that's the lesson on maintaining good cervical and head posture while you're sleeping early in down to prevent a lot of headaches, shoulder and neck problems. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, some information. One last thing, a lot of people ask about sleeping on their stomach. I had a class where we had asked the people in the class, how many sleep on their stomach? What kind of class? It was a class on treatment of the neck. So it was legitimate. A physical therapy class. And anyway, of all the people that slept on their stomach, 100% of them had headaches. So it's just something to think of. Because when you sleep on your stomach, what you're doing is your neck is either turning all the way to the right or all the way to the left. And that, as we discussed in some of our other videos, can cause headaches in the upper cervical area here. So, just something to think about. I know it's very hard to change sleeping patterns. But if you are having headaches, that may be one of the sources and you can see if you can gradually move away from sleep-enriched stomach to move your side around your back. Alright, thanks Bob. Oh, and there's one last thing about these memory phone pillows. A friend of mine who turned me on to these, he actually has two of them. I don't have two here, but he keeps one down here that he lays on. And the second one, he says he just likes to hold it and cuddle with it. It's very nice. And I said, well why don't you just cuddle with your wife and there's those nights where she's not happy with them. So then there's the second pillow. So they're wonderful pillows. What's the name, Brad? Oh Tim! Yeah, Tim, I don't want to make him say his last name. My name is Brad. I'm your Tatum. Yeah, my friend Tim and his pillows.