If you wake up with an ache or stiffness in your neck, an anti-inflammatory medicine your doctor prescribed or a hot water pack will only give you temporary comfort. Sleeping right is the only way to help your body. “At least one-fourth of our life is spent in sleeping for the required rest for the activities of daily living. We need to sleep right if one needs to enjoy a painfree and productive morning,” says Dr Harsh Priyadarshi, spine specialist, Max Healthcare, New Delhi. Here is what you can do to keep your mornings pain free:

The pillow
“The neck isn’t straight but has an anterior curve which your pillow must support. The pillow should start from your upper shoulder blade and end at your head. In between, it should support the curve of your neck too,” says Dr HN Bajaj, spine specialist with Max Healthcare, New Delhi.
Since such carefully contoured pillows aren’t readily available in the market, you should look for softness in a pillow. There are no yardsticks here but Dr Manoj Kumar, consultant with Moolchand Orthopaedics Hospital, New Delhi, says we should find a pillow that is “neither too soft nor too hard”. He says, “It should be soft enough that it can be crushed to fit inside the curve of our neck. A hard pillow won’t be able to do that. However, the pillow shouldn’t be so soft that it fails to support the head.”

Another option to make better use of your pillow would be to tuck it behind your knees. “It can be laid beneath the knees when lying on one’s back, or behind the back when lying on the side and beneath one’s chest when lying on stomach. So, the size should be equivalent to the width and height of the body configurations and softness should be convenient to maintain the normal curvatures,” says Dr Priyadarshi.

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