"Health Beat"

Baby Pandas: Not Orthopedic. Atlanta Zoo/AP Photo

Orthopedic pillows are a hot item in the health care and bedding fields right now. It seems you can’t shop for a plain old pillow without being bombarded by high-tech pillows such as memory foam pillows, water pillows, gel pillows—or decidedly low-tech pillows, such as rice or buckwheat pillows. All of them make claims to be the best, most comfortable, and most beneficial for your health, your back, your neck, your posture. And they throw that term at you: Orthopedic.

What the heck does that mean, anyway?

Orthopedics is the medical study of the musculoskeletal system. Everything from neck to foot is studied, and practitioners in the field are involved in sports medicine, joint replacement, arthritis treatment, and any just about any kind of bone surgery you can think of.

As medical research and technology have fused together to improve health care, so products for use in the home have become more and more available. And who doesn’t like the thought of being able to get healthier while snoozing?

Body Pillow: Orthopedic. Snoozer Junior Children Body Pillow available at painreliever.com

So, an orthopedic pillow is a pillow designed, through shaping and materials, to support the sleeper’s body in a position that is most beneficial to the muscles and skeleton. Without support of one’s limbs, the natural line of the spine can be distorted during sleep, putting stress on muscles and ligaments.

Orthopedic pillows include, but are not limited to:

The body pillow, the cervical pillow, the neck pillow, the lumbar or back pillow, and the knee or leg spacer pillow. Each of these types of pillows is specially designed to support or cradle that particular body part. All of them, technically, can be designated as orthopedic. It’s up to you to narrow down that definition and learn which pillow is best for you. If you’re a side sleeper, the body pillow or the leg spacer pillow may be best. If you prefer to sleep on your back, you should look into the cervical pillow or the knee pillow—or perhaps both at the same time.

An orthopedic pillow doesn’t mean a pillow that’s only one design. An orthopedic pillow is simply a pillow that’s been fashioned to meet the needs of the human skeleton. And just like human bones, the orthopedic pillow comes in many shapes.

Sissel Orthopedic Neck Pillow, available at painreliever.com

For these and many other dreamy pillows designed to help you achieve a good night’s rest, please visit painreliever.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Orthopedics, Pain Relief Products, Pillows, sleep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.