I’m a side sleeper and I like an extra-firm pillow. I don’t like down because it squishes “down” to the point where it’s too flat and I get a neck-ache. So I buy pillows with artificial stuffing. They last a couple of years and then it’s time to buy another. But they’re kind of cheap, so no biggie.
“Zoey” pillows, eh? ::Googling:: Looks like it has memory foam. Doesn’t that stuff squish down too?
My wife and I both use memory foam ‘orthopedic’ style pillows, with the horizontal depression in the middle and curving up at top and bottom to support the neck. Very comfortable. We do have to replace them every few years because the memory foam eventually wears out and loses its memory.
It’s shredded memory foam, which is a leap forward in pillow thinking. Seriously. I have two, that I received with my mattress order). I was skeptical when I received them, but they’re wonderful. I’m a side and stomach sleeper (and a twisted combo of the two, which I know is terrible for my body), and they work perfectly for me.
+1000 on this. I was actually considering posting a rant about down pillows recently. Whoever came up with the idea of using down as a pillow filling must be an alien who has never actually experienced this human phenomenon called “sleep”. Down is a wonderful quilt and sleeping bag filling, because it insulates well even when damp, it’s light, and it compresses well and rebounds fully from compression. But the ease of compression makes it an absolutely terrible pillow filling. It’s like using a handkerchief as a pillow, except worse, because the little feather shafts always poke through the fabric, making the experience similar to sleeping on a bag full of needles. Down pillows may not be worst idea in human history, but it’s in the top ten.
I have two “Japanese” pillows filled with buckwheat husks that I really like. Yes, they are like sandbags, which means they hold the shape I smack them into. And with the “atmospheric rivers” in these parts, having a couple of sandbags isn’t the worst idea.
I bought a COOP pillow a few months back. It’s firm, which as a side sleeper I like, and it came with additional stuffing material if you choose to add it.
This is me, too. And I also wound up with shredded memory foam for one of my pillows.
I used to have an old, very compressible down pillow. I could shape it just how I wanted it, which was mostly just as a thin layer under the side of my head. But, I developed an allergy and had to get rid of the down pillow. I bought one shredded memory foam pillow with the ability to remove some, which I did. And I got a flat memory foam pillow to replicate that thin layer effect. Neither one is just right, so I keep switching back and forth.
Down does not insulate well when damp. That’s its biggest problem as an insulator.
As I mentioned, I used to sleep wonderfully on my down pillow. I did not have an issue with being poked – that happens a lot with feather pillows, in my experience, but for my true down pillows, made with good tight-weave fabric, it was never an issue.
Every once in a while I think, man, I love this pillow.
It’s perfect for me. It is on the firm side, although I guess you can adjust that by removing some of the innards.
The bilateral shoulder pain I referenced in my OP is mostly gone. I’m not attributing that to the new pillow, necessarily, but I can say that it didn’t make it worse.
I can imagine that some might not like its feel, the memory foamness of it, so I hesitate to give it a blanket (heh) recommendation. But I remain very glad I got it.
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