The Right Pillow for Allergies

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Michael Breus, PhD
The type of pillow that you get should be specific to the sides in which you sleep. So, if you're a side sleeper you're going to need a thicker, more firm pillow to keep proper head and neck alignment, verses a back sleeper or even a stomach sleeper where a lot of stomach sleepers may not even require a pillow to sleep. The reason that people get allergic to down pillows is not because of the feathers. It's because the feathers haven't been cleaned properly. and so there's a lots of bacteria, dust mites, things like that in there. So synthetic down won't have any of that, so oftentimes, and it feels just the same. I often recommend synthetic down pillows. And then, what you'd want in that case, it'd be like that good fluffy down feeling, is to have a higher fill in the pillow. You can have 300, 400, 500 fill count in a pillow, and so what I recommend to people who are side sleepers is to have five or even 600 fill count, so it will keep your head up because the distance between your ear and your shoulder is what you're trying to accommodate for and still give you that fluffy down feeling.