Therapeutic sleep products help everyone get good night's rest

Chiropractic treatment goals are achieved more easily and completely when the patient enjoys night after night of restful sleep, many doctors now believe.

Trouble is, restful sleep is elusive.

"In a typical night, the average adult repositions in bed 150 to 250 times," reports Gary Langston, an operations staffer at the Cole Chiropractic Group in Memphis, Tenn. "It's hard to see how anyone who does that much tossing and turning can possibly be sleeping well."

Awakened to the sad fact of fitful slumber, chiropractors in growing numbers are now recommending for their patients orthopedically correct beds and bedding in the hope that these will provide the support and comfort necessary to achieve deep, restorative somnolence.

Dizzying Choices

But here is where matters turn dicey. The choices confronting doctors and patients when it comes to therapeutic sleep products are vast—intimidating, even. Just in the category of pillows there are more than a dozen types. These include air pillows, bed pillows, bolsters, buckwheat hull pillows, cervical pillows, feather pillows, leg and body pillows, lumbar support pillows, memory foam pillows, neck pillows, neck rolls, positioning pillows, side sleeping pillows, travel pillows, and water pillows.

Then, within each type are scores of manufacturers, each offering products with a unique set of features, benefits, and value propositions. Therapeutica, for instance, is one of many popular brands. Its current best-selling pillow promises to support the upper back while its cervical contour maintains the natural curve of the neck and a center cavity cradles the head for optimal support and comfort. Then there is the Mogu therapeutic pillow, which is designed to relieve the pressure load on the neck and shoulders throughout the night by means of a double chamber and a heat-dispersing titanium weave cover.

Add to these the many homegrown pillow solutions developed by chiropractors and you may need to lie down for a while to regain your equilibrium. Martin Geoffreys, DC, CCSP, a practitioner in Dana Point, Calif, is one such pillow-maker. His is sold nationally under the name Relax Right. Geoffreys finished his research-and-development on the pillow 3 years ago and brought it to market with the help of one of his patients: Brian Reeves, a consumer products and packaging specialist.

Figure 1. The Strobel Supple-Pedic toxin-free mattress provides the lowest surface pressures of any mattress on the market today.

Geoffreys decided to try his hand at creating a pillow in response to complaints from patients who had trouble sleeping restfully. "I answered those complaints at first by recommending a number of different orthopedic pillows," he says, "but they didn't seem to help—some of my patients ended up owning as many as 10 different pillows, with a few of those costing more than $100. I saw a clear need for a better pillow."

Comfort and Posture

Reeves explains that a good night's sleep results when the body is comfortable and correctly postured. Both are accomplished by providing proper support, he says. And that, Reeves explains, is the aim of Geoffreys' pillow design, which employs hollow-core construction and uses different densities of memory foam. "The hollow core allows for gentle axial traction of the cervical spine while sleeping supine," Reeves indicates. "Adjacent to the hollow core are ergonomic side sleeping panels. These panels are made of softer memory foam and allow an individual to maintain a neutral head position."

Over at Cole Chiropractic Group, Langston's employer—Larry Cole, DC—has himself developed a therapeutic pillow, except that it is intended exclusively for side sleeping. (By contrast, Geoffreys' Relax Right pillow is meant for both back and side sleeping.) "Side-posture sleeping is the most natural and relaxing position due to our body's innate ability to revert back to the fetal position all humans began life with," says Cole, whose pillow is branded with the name of SleepPosture™. Langston offers that the pillow relieves musculoskeletal pain and is beneficial for patients suffering from sleep apnea, congestive heart failure, and ear pain. "Even women who are pregnant find it helpful," he says. "The pillow's shape—it looks like a 2-foot-long numeral nine or a partial question mark—is to prevent you from sleeping on your back and stomach so that you don't put strain on your neck and jaw and back."

An interesting feature of the SleepPosture pillow is an ear well. This, Langston says, serves to elevate the sleeper's chin approximately 1 inch. Doing so increases the curve of the neck, which, he contends, is essential for good sleep posture. "As an extra benefit, it opens the airway, which helps address the issue of obstructive sleep apnea," he says.

Cole decided to make a therapeutic pillow after realizing that many of his patients who awoke in the morning with back pain did so because during the night their upper torso had been twisting in one direction while their pelvis was twisting in another—an action putting undue pressure on the spinal cord. Sales of the SleepPosture pillow began about 3 years ago. Cole ships upward of 1,200 units per month, many to sleep disorders clinics.

A "Bedder" Night's Sleep

In addition to therapeutic pillows, patients these days have a wide array of mattresses and beds from which to choose.

Figure 2. The Relax Right pillow has a hollow core, allowing for gentle axial traction of the cervical spine while sleeping supine.

Among the more intriguing mattresses is the Supple-Pedic from Strobel Technologies, Jeffersonville, Ind. "It's clinically proven to reduce tossing and turning, resulting in a more restful and refreshing night's sleep," says Mark Strobel, company president. "A doctor researching Supple-Pedic found that nighttime movements were reduced by 90%."

Strobel asserts that his Supple-Pedic mattress provides the lowest surface pressures of any mattress on the market today thanks in part to its patented lever support system—high-resilience, 8- to 12-inch spring wire rod modules that each resemble a ladder balanced on a fulcrum. "These modules work in tandem to compensate for unequal pressures across the mattress surface when a person lies down on it," Strobel says. "It's like a teeter-totter. Your hips, for instance, push down on one end of a lever support module, and that causes the opposite end of the module to push up and provide additional support to the recessed area of your lower back."

This lever support system works in concert with a pressure-relieving material called Polyfilax. Polyfilax is a plastic memory copolymer that becomes more pliable and pressure-dispersing the closer its proximity to body warmth. "As the temperature of the material decreases as a result of increasing distance from the body, it becomes gradually less pliable, providing a consistent and evenly distributed source of support," Strobel says. "Together with the lever support system, it provides uniform contouring across the entire body, including the hips, shoulders, and small of the back. It gives you the sensation of feeling weightless, contented, relaxed, at ease, and secure."

Meanwhile, selling at Amazon.com for close to $2,700 is a memory foam adjustable therapeutic massage bed—mattress not included. This powered product will elevate the back and the legs, or the legs alone, to increase blood circulation. The bed features a vibration massage function with three intensity levels. It can handle a weight load of up to 600 pounds.

Given all the choices, how does one match the right bed with the ideal mattress and pillow combination for optimal comfort and support? Experts confess there is no surefire formula. But a good rule of thumb would be simply to identify in each category the highest-quality product and pick that, the idea being that it is difficult to go wrong going with the best.

Rich Smith is a contributing writer to Chiropractic Products. For more information, contact .