Buying Guides

Propping a sore knee on a pillow is the most natural thing in the world, and after a knee replacement it works directly against the result you are trying to get. Where the pillow goes instead, and why it matters more here than after a hip.

Osteoporosis itself does not hurt. Compression fractures in the spine do, and the riskiest moment of the night is not lying down but getting up. The pillow set-up that supports the shape you have, and the way to leave the bed.

Whether you need a pillow between your legs at all depends on which way the surgeon went in. Anterior and posterior approaches carry different precautions, and most advice online quietly assumes one of them.

A pinched nerve felt in the shoulder is usually compressed in the neck, not the shoulder. Which means your pillow height is doing more to it every night than anything you do during the day. The positions that close the nerve exit, and the ones that open it.

Axial SpA pulls the spine toward a fixed forward stoop, so a tall pillow is eight hours of the exact posture you are trying to resist. Why the usual neck-pain advice inverts here, and the one situation where it flips back.

When the incision is at the back of your neck, the pillow presses directly on it in the one position you are told to sleep in. Why posterior cervical surgery is the opposite problem to an ACDF, and what to use instead.

After a shoulder replacement the head pillow is the smaller half of the problem. What decides whether you sleep is the incline and what holds the arm so the elbow cannot fall behind your body.

The neck pain that surprises most people after a thyroidectomy is at the back of the neck, not the incision at the front — and it comes from the position you were held in during surgery. What that means for your pillow.

A cervical disc replacement is meant to keep the operated level moving, so there is often no collar at all — which means the pillow is doing the aligning from the first night. What that changes, and what to look for.