AH, THE VEXING QUEST to find the pillow of your dreams. Too soft and you must rest your head on your palm for extra support. Too hard and all you can count on is a stiff neck the next morning. While shoppers have long had their pick of stuffing—from memory foam and poly-fill to goose down—too often they get their pillows home from the store and sigh (all night) while attempting to slumber on them.
A new breed of highly adjustable models promises to let you fine-tune height and firmness by adding or subtracting filling to suit the exact curvature of your neck and preferred sleep position. The goal of such pillows, according to Dr. Aarti Grover, medical director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, is to support your spinal alignment so you won’t wake up with an achy neck. Proper propping up, he added, “can prevent a lot of sleep-related insomnia issues.” All bodies are shaped a little differently, Dr. Grover explained, so personalizing a pillow makes sense.
