Choosing a Pillow for Sleep Apnea? Here’s All you Need to Know

Pillow for Sleep Apnea

Ever wondered if your thunderous snoring at night is genetic or not? According to sleep.org, when it comes to OSA (Obstructive sleep apnea) causing snoring, genetic markers found in the blood have been recognized as having a solid positive connection to wheezing. Combined with a family ancestry, these markers recommend that wheezing is, partially, an inherited encounter.

Fortunately, many treatments are available to help combat the sleep disorder. Most of which have pillows as a staple item not just because of its apparent usage in treating the condition, but also the orthopedic benefits associated. Let’s take a look at some of the most useful tips when choosing a sleep apnea pillow.

How pillows help treat sleep apnea

Sleep apnea pillow that you can use without a CPAP machine helps position your neck in a way that opens up your airway passage for optimal oxygen intake. The ones you use with the machine are intended to eliminate any discomforts of wearing your CPAP mask. Some higher end options have additional supportive features that keep the mask in place and prevent it from straying off to one side.

They’re intended for use with a CPAP machine or without. They come in various styles, including a wedge shape, which raises your chest area. Sleeping on your back with your body raised from the abdomen up may help shield your airway route from falling and, thus, improve your condition, the American Sleep Apnea Association says. Use froth wedges, not delicate pillows.

Empirical indications show that pillow use with CPAP has helped improve overall comfortability by a large margin. However, more concrete evidence is still needed, as the degree of sleep quality in patients who utilised these specialized pillows did not have a significant difference to those who did not. Nevertheless, the overall comfortability and integrity of a pillow still plays an important role in getting a good restful sleep.

Shape

To choose which pillow is ideal for you, you need to know the sorts first. The market for these has expanded a lot in recent years, and you can expect the following 5 common derivatives of specialized pillows.

CPAP Pillow

This pillow is created to provide better support primarily for your head. They typically have a form of adaptive filling in light of its body-embracing and backing potential. They’re formed to oblige the CPAP cylinders and covers to diminish spillage.

Muscular Memory Foam Pillows

Consider CPAP Pillows, however without the unpredictable patterns for CPAP covers. They offer a similar help head, neck, shoulders.

Movable Pillow

This kind of cushion is topped off with destroyed froth. It’s called flexible on the grounds that you can undoubtedly adjust the shape and the filling.

Wedge Pillow

Now and again, sleep apnea can be diminished by dozing at a point. The slanted pillow utilizes gravity to free the aviation routes.

Breathability

Feeling hot and sweat-soaked doesn’t make for a decent night’s rest. You need a pillow that permits air to go through as opposed to catching warmth. A dependable guideline: The denser the pillow filling, the less breathable it’ll be for your head and neck. In our tests, the pillows that stay cool are made of polyester or destroyed froth. Ones made of a solitary section of froth were the most un-breathable.

Shouldn’t something be said about cushions with cooling gel cushions? In our tests, these did at first give our human subjects a to some degree invigorating feel, yet that immediately wore off, and the pillows ended up being probably the most un-breathable ones in our tests.

Maintenance Requirements

Only one out of every odd pillow can be washed—a few marks may demonstrate that only the cover can be cleaned. The majority of the pillows we test are machine launderable, commonly on a virus setting. In the event that you have a hypersensitivity to tidy bugs, you’ll have to wash a cushion in heated water (130° F) for a month to kill off any bugs, as per The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Shouldn’t something be said about supplanting a cushion? The National Sleep Foundation suggests getting another pillow each one to two years.

Firmness

Do you sleep generally on your back, your side, or your stomach? For the most part, in case you’re a side sleeper, you need a more full pillow that compensates for the hole between the bed and your upper back and shoulder bones. It’ll help keep your neck lined up with your spine instead of calculated to evade any strain, says Joel Press, M.D., physiatrist-in-boss at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Back sleepers need compliment pillows since that hole is more modest, because of the bend of the upper back and shoulder bones. For stomach sleepers, their neck’s curve is best preserved when lying on a thinner pillow.

Don’t simply depend on the maker’s name for how firm a cushion is. Press down on the pillow to check its actual immovability. Shake, lighten, press, and even lay on it in the event that you can to discover what you’re purchasing. For pillows that are made of a free filling—rather than a piece of froth—check whether it keeps up its shape after you cushion it, and whether there are any uneven spots. You need a pillow that keeps up a uniform shape and thickness.

Mattress

Beddings also have a very big say in whether or not your pillows will work to their fullest capacities. Softer pillows require more slender beddings. The fact stays the same regardless if you sleep on your stomach or back. It is often thought that a gentler bedding commonly permits the body to sink into it, hence there’s to a lesser extent a gap between your head and the pillow. Firmer sleeping mattresses shield you from seeping in so much, leaving a bigger hole among it and your neck to fill, so you’ll need a thicker pillow.

There’s constantly been this constant battle to locate the correct mattresses for plus-size individuals. Consider factors, for example, materials, thickness, movability, weight limit and ventilation cautiously to guarantee you get the most out of it.

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Nirupama Verma is a self passionate blogger, managing a bunch of informational blogs. She has written a lot of informational content for several popular blogs.

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