A good night’s sleep is a crucial factor in everyone’s life. It can make your day joyful or it can make you tired all day. For this reason, it is important to make sure your sleep is comfortable and healthy.
One of the things you might wonder is whether your choice of pillow is right for you or even if you should be sleeping with a pillow at all. In this article, we will go through all the benefits of sleeping without pillows and the best ways to do so as well.
Benefits of Sleeping Without a Pillow
People who tried sleeping without a pillow or on CANMOV Rocker Recliner Chair say that it has had many health benefits and improved their sleep quality. Sleeping without a pillow helps with neck and back pain. It significantly reduces the risk of sleeping on the incorrect pillow or in an incorrect position which can lead to chronic pains in the neck and back.
Also, it helps with morning headaches as it reduces and even eliminates them. Moreover, it helps you avoid getting facial acne, swelling, redness, and infections in your face and improves your skin’s health.
Relieving Back Pain
Choosing the correct pillow that gives you proper support to your spine is not easy. Hence, most people end up choosing a pillow that pressures the spine instead. In the long run, this can cause back pain which can develop into chronic pain.
When sleeping without a pillow, your head is following the natural curve of your spine, which provides more comfortable sleep. This helps eliminate back pain.
Improving Your Posture
Pillows generally help with having a good posture. However, in specific sleeping positions such as on your stomach, it is better for your posture if you do not use a pillow since your mattress will provide a flat surface that allows spinal alignment. Stomach sleepers who use a thick pillow will have their neck much higher than the rest of their spine, creating an unnatural position, which not only affects posture badly but also causes discomfort. If your favorite sleep position is either on your back or side, it’s probably better to use a pillow to keep your spine in a neutral position.
Relieving Neck Pain
Just like posture, neck pain and pillows depend on your position while sleeping. Depending on the angle of your neck in the position you sleep in, going pillowless might help you with eliminating aches such as neck pains.
The main way to achieve painless sleep is making sure you are not applying any pressure on your neck and spine and making sure your neck is aligned with your spine in a comfortable position. Don’t forget to try memory foam pillows if you’re still experiencing neck strain with regular pillows.
Headaches Relief
A lot of people often wake up with a headache. When sleeping with a pillow, depending on the type of pillow, of course, the blood flow to the head is often reduced. Therefore, since the oxygen is not distributed properly to the brain, you might wake up with a headache. People who sleep without pillows say that it reduces their painful morning headaches.
Reducing Facial Acne
Pillows collect facial oils, dirt, dust, sweat, saliva, and much more. All of this leads to bacteria accumulating in your pillow, which your face comes in direct contact with. This bacteria can cause facial acne, redness and swelling, and even infections.
Sleeping without your pillow reduces the direct contact with your skin which eventually protects it from all the risks mentioned above.
This does not apply to hair: there are no established connections between sleeping without a pillow and getting healthier hair.
Reducing Stress
Finding the perfect comfortable pillow, as discussed previously, can be quite tricky. Thus, most people complain that they cannot find a comfortable position to sleep at night. This can cause aggravation, stress, discomfort, and a lot of tossing and turning.
This can create a very uncomfortable sleeping experience. Not using a pillow forces your body to take its natural curve on the bed which can reduce tension, pain, and discomfort, and leads to a comfortable stress-free sleep.
Reducing Wrinkles
In particular for those who sleep on their stomach or their side, studies have shown that pillows can squeeze the skin while they are asleep. This can cause sleep wrinkles over time and add to the outward manifestations of aging.
How to Start TODAY
As most people are used to sleeping with a pillow, deciding to sleep without one can seem very difficult and foreign to you. If you are looking to try sleeping without a pillow to see if it provides you with a healthier sleep, there are a few things you can do to prepare yourself for this adjustment.
Immediately ditching your pillow might be too big of a change for you to accept it. You need to start doing a few practices to ease you into sleeping without a pillow. First, you can remove the pillow and put any piece of folder cloth or blanket beneath your head.
This cloth will not be too thick like a pillow and it allows you not to sleep directly on the flat surface of the bed, which gives your need the chance to adjust to the change slowly. You can start with a thick cloth and then make it thinner with time, or directly use a thin pillow if you feel like it.
As you do that and slowly transition into sleeping without a pillow, always make sure that your neck and your spine are comfortably aligned to avoid any pain or discomfort, or even injury. After a while, you will realize you can easily sleep on the flat surface of your bed without needing a pillow anymore.
It is vital to get a comfortable night’s sleep. Not only for mental reasons but physical ones as well. Improper sleep can lead to physical pain, stress, and overall bad health. Sleeping without a pillow has helped many people with lots of aspects.
Furthermore, it helps with reducing stress and provides you with overall improved quality of sleep. Sleeping without a pillow may or may not be for you. Some people have reported it has improved their health and some other people say otherwise. Before you decide whether you will sleep without a pillow or not, make sure you do your proper research and get medical advice from your doctor, especially if you’re suffering from sleep apnea, since breathing may feel more laborious when your head is not raised.
