February 2021 - NIGHTINGOLD

The 6 wrong ways to place the pillow

We humans, you know, are creative people even when we go to sleep. In a previous article we told you about the different sleep positions, while here we wanted to collect 6 wrong ways to place the pillow: rather common errors but all harmful to our posture and well-being. Let’s see why

1) Pillow under the shoulders

One of the most frequent mistakes is to put the pillow under your shoulders. In this way the pillow is crushed by the (important) weight of the back and cannot adhere well to the neck and head that are instead the two parts of the body that it should support.

You put it under your back because you love reading in the bed? Of course there is nothing wrong. But then, when you lay down, it is good to recover the correct position.

2) Neck out of pillow

This is the opposite position to the previous one but incorrect in the same way. That is, a pillow that does not adhere to the shoulders but not even to the neck, because it is positioned too far back and accommodate only the head or a part of it.

Supporting the cervical spine with the pillow at night is instead a fundamental element to ensure a quality rest avoiding stiff neck and many other discomforts.

3) Pillow on the headboard

Another typical mistake is to place the pillow on the headboard of the bed by putting it almost vertically. The pillow should be placed directly on the mattress, and its ability to support you also depends on it.

In addition, a vertical pillow forces your head and neck to an oblique, completely unnatural position, causing muscle tension and consequent cervical pain.

4) Arm under the head or under the pillow

Putting an arm under the face is a great classic, not only when sleeping on your stomach. It generally comes from the need to have a stiffer support or from the desire to increase the height of the pillow, which is evidently inadequate.

In all cases it is a big mistake not only for your neck. The shoulders twist leading the spine to take a misalignment position that your body will try to compensate “in some way”, a situation certainly not optimal for your posture.

5) Pillow along the body

Are you part of those people who hug the pillow to fall asleep, placing it along the chest because they love that feeling of warm softness that comes with it?

There is nothing wrong of course but be careful: the pillow loses all its functionality turning into an accessory element, almost like a teddy bear! While the pillow, we remember, is together with the mattress a fundamental element to speep well and live our days with the right energy.

6) Double pillows

Some people tend to fold the pillow in two parts as to be thicker, perhaps to watch TV or even use a double pillow. The problem is that they then fall asleep in this position and sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with widespread malaise. Why?

The reason is that the height of the pillow is fundamental and it’s designed to align the neck with the rest of the column, especially in a tailor made pillow like our Nightingold. Double the height of the pillow by folding it in two … it’s never a good idea.

So how to position the pillow?

Regardless of the position you take, on the side or on the back, the pillow must accommodate both the neck and the head that must ideally position itself in the center, as you see in the pictures below.

When you lay down on your bed try to follow these 3 rules:

1) place the pillow horizontally without bending or deforming it;

2) position your shoulders directly on the mattress

3) check to “feel” the pillow touching your neck

Aren’t you comfortable and can’t find the right location to relax?

Then maybe you use a pillow that’s not right for you.

Properly placing the pillow is the first step to getting a good night’s sleep. The second step? Sleep on a tailor made pillow. Nightingold is the pillow created around your physicality and habits.

Discover the benefits of a personalized pillow

Do you suffer of agitated nights and can’t find the right position for your pillow?

We are happy to make our expertise available to you.

blog

Memory pillows can be really different

Let’s get this straight: this is not the usual article about the characteristics of a memory pillow. On the net you will find hundreds of insights and we also have already covered the topic here.

In this article we want to explain why some memory pillows cost 30 euros and others 300 euros, why some are breathable and others are not, some soft and others rigid, and why we had the need to call our memory differently: Memory Gold.

Viscosity and elasticity

To understand the differences between a memory foam pillow and ours made of Memory Gold, we have to make a small technical digression, talking about viscoelasticity. Each memory pillow plays on the balance between two characteristics: viscosity and elasticity.

> Viscosity is the resistance that the material has when pressure is exerted (of the head in the case of pillows);

> Elasticity is the ability of that material to return to its initial position after being deformed.

As in a scale, if the balance is shifted towards viscosity, the pillow will be very hard and will find it difficult to get back into initial position, while if it is too elastic it will quickly “bounce” at the expense of comfort.

All companies that design memory foam pillows try to find the perfect balance between viscosity and elasticity. This influence the way in which they choose materials and some other parameters with different mixes of ingredients. However, the result is not always the same..

How has your memory been processed?

To achieve the balance between viscosity and elasticity there are several ways: some more expensive, others cheaper. For obvious reasons, many companies choose the cheapest route by purchasing lower quality materials (polymers with a small cell size) and sometimes even shortening process times. Choices that result in a imbalance on viscosity.

Maybe when you touch it in the store, the pillow can look nice and compact, but in a daily use you would realize that it struggles to adapt to the different positions you take at night, giving you the feeling that you do not have the right support. And that’s not the only downside.

It’s a question of breathability.

In addition to excessive viscosity, a memory foam pillow produced from poor materials has another problem, perhaps even more serious: it is not breathable.

This is because a small cell size penalizes air circulation by generating that annoying feeling of excessive heat under the face. In addition, the heat generated and the scarcity of oxygen are conditions that favor bacterial proliferation. A great minus for those suffering from allergies, rhinitis, dermatitis and the many who wake up in the morning with itching in the eyes.

A cheap memory foam pillow is therefore woody, hotter, less elastic and less breathable than a high-quality memory foam pillow. That’s why we decided to call our pillows Memory Gold.

Memory Gold pillows.

At Nightingold, we ensure the maximum quality of the product by working on the polymer construction. We are not the only ones in the world, but we are definitely among the few.

We do this because we want our pillow to have the perfect balance between viscosity and elasticity, between comfort and support, between lightness and breathability. Our formula and our mix of materials is obviously a secret but the effects are obvious.

You can notice it from the slow, controlled movement that each Memory Gold pillow has when it comes back into initial position, from the fact that it accompany and support your neck and head lightly throughout the night, or when you wake up in the morning and no longer have that annoying itching in your eyes.

Plus they’re tailor-made… but that’s yet another story.

Buy a Nightingold pillow

For any further information don’t hesitate to contact us, click our Nightingale

We are happy to put at your disposal our knowledge.

blog

Do you feel irritable and impatient? It’s all about how you sleep!

You’ve probably already tried on your skin how lack of sleep causes irritability. After a sleepless or very disturbed night, you often happen not only to feel fatigued and not very energetic, but definitely more irritable and vulnerable to stress.

Many scientific researches have verified the existence of a direct correlation between irritability and lack of sleep.

How many times have you been able to quickly lose patience for a colleague’s request, to quarrel with your partner without even knowing why or, even worse, to react disproportionately with your children, who were only looking for spending time with you?

Lack of sleep and irritability

Many studies have shown that lack of sleep has a significant impact on our mood, even when it comes to partial deprivation, which we sometimes think cannot have significant consequences.

“Even small night fluctuations in sleep duration can affect how people respond to events in their daily lives,” says psychologist Nancy Sin of the University of British Columbia.

“We found that when people sleep less than usual, they don’t have the same boost in positive emotions from their positive events,” Sin says. Sleeping longer, on the other hand, makes positive events look even better and protects against the negative effects of daily stress.

Some scientific researches

In this regard, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania carried out a very interesting study. Adult behaviors were studied after only 1 week of reduction of their rest to 5 hours a night.

A relatively short period, and a sleep deprivation that might seem with no impacts. How many times have you ever slept five hours? There are, even, those who consider 5-6 hours as the standard time of a good daily rest.

But that’s not what the study showed. The results are astonishing

An interesting study on sleep and irritability

To test the impact of sleep deprivation on behaviors, the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study of 16 adults, everyone in perfect health conditions.

For 7 consecutive days the subjects were induced to a sleep deprivation of 33%, causing them to sleep about 5 hours/night.

The experiment involved a timely analysis of the state of fatigue and the behaviors of the subjects who, 3 times a day, were monitored through scientific tests.

The monitoring provided an evaluation on different parameters: level of psychomotor surveillance, storage capacity and presence of cognitive-emotional disorders.

Results

The test results are impressive. In just 1 week of reduction of rest, all subjects showed a worsening of their ability to carry out their normal daily activities.

Fatigue, sense of confusion, tension and a general behavior disorder is what most of the people reported.

There has also been an increase in memory gaps.

And the most important thing, is that such effects appeared already after only 2 days of reduction of sleep hours

Recovery

By the time the subjects returned to sleep about 7.5 hours a night, the negative effects completely disappeared.

The alarming news is that it took from 2 to 3 days to recover the deprivation accumulated in only 1 week. Furthermore, as the days of deprivation have increased, it has proved to be increasingly difficult to make a full recovery.

What about you? Do you suffer from irritability?

How long have you not been sleeping more than 5-6 hours a night? You’ve probably figured out now why you feel so tired and cranky. It is also possible that the days when you seem to see “all black” are the ones where you have rested the worst.

So it’s time to do something to improve the quality of your life, how you feel, and your relationships.

What to do if your sleep is not good

There are a lot of things that affect our sleep. From pre-sleep habits, to the lights you submit to your eyes just before you fall asleep, to the foods you take over dinner. Even the colors of your bedroom walls can have an impact on how easily you fall asleep.

But what certainly has a direct influence on the quality of your sleep is the ability to completely relax when you lie on the bed and position your head on your pillow.

That should be the moment you feel that sensation of muscle relaxation, which starts from behind the neck and reaches the extremities; the tip of his hands; the tip of the toes.

If that doesn’t happen to you, it’s time to question your pillow. Have you ever thought about it?

The importance of pillow on a good sleep

Have you ever thought that, in addition to the mattress, the pillow is a fundamental element to be able to achieve that kind of deep relaxation?

Do you know that when you sleep with the appropriate pillow, you have a much less disturbed sleep thanks to the fact that the body takes a correct, muscularly “neutral” position, which can be maintained for several consecutive hours?

If your sleep is very rough, it is very likely that you are taking incorrect postures that your physique cannot sustain for several consecutive hours. And that depends on whether your pillow isn’t supporting your head as it should and you try to compensate in any way. Arms under the pillow, bent leg, crooked back, elbows under the head.

Anything to find a moment of peace … but at what cost?

The pillow that perfectly suits for you is the one that can properly support your head, aligning your neck to your column.

In fact, when this correct alignment exists, the whole column can relax and send a message of deep relaxation to the body, through the nervous system. The muscles relax, the tendons in turn can finally stop working, …. Everything finally indulges in a deep sleep

The tailor made pillow

Getting column alignment is not immediate, because it depends on a lot of factors, first of all your sleep position.

Sleeping to the side leads you to have different needs than those who sleep on their stomachs up. In addition, the physicality of each of us is different, so you can well imagine that each of us needs a different pillow.

What does it feel like to wear shoes that are too tight or one size more?

And for our neck and shoulders it’s exactly the same thing. They also need the same attention that we reserve at our feet.

Nightingold is the first company offering the tailor made pillow. Through a process of in-depth investigation of your needs and desires, we are able to create the memory foam pillow created specifically for you, different from that of any other.

Starting from high quality materials, we create tailor-made recipes that can transform the wishes and needs of the customer into his pillow.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to start sleeping well.

Contact us to find out how we can help you finally rest as you deserve

blog

Food and Sleep

The quality of your rest is a fundamental element for the overall health of your body and mind. And we know how food plays a key role on it.

Sleeping well reduces the risk of developing some chronic diseases, keeps your mind healthy and strengthens your immune system. (Article: The importance of a good night’s sleep)

Nutrition and its impact on your rest

Whether it’s “energy shock” after a cup of coffee or that feeling of drowsiness after Christmas lunch, you’ll certainly have experienced directly how nutrition can affect your energy and waking state.

We perfectly know how important is “staying light” at lunch time, particularly when we have to sit in the office or face endless meetings.

Two very complex mechanisms

However, we should not underestimate that both nutrition and sleep are two very complex mechanisms having a strong influence on our organism. A complexity that increases exponentially when we relate them.

At night, our rest is characterized by the alternation of 4 different phases, what we call sleep cycles. Sleep, in fact, is a dynamic mechanism with a specific and very complex architecture, which alternates different phases and cycles that allow the body to regenerate tissues and the mind. (Article: Sleep cycles and stages: do you know how it works?)

Science has done a lot of research on how nutrition impacts each stage of sleep, and there are many results, which you’ll find out in a very short time.

The 6 foods that can help you

Researchers, nutritionists and sleep experts have conducted several studies to try to understand the impact of diet on the quality of the sleep.

If the results of this research provide very interesting ideas, they cannot be considered definitive. If there is no food that alone can change the fate of your rest, there are some foods that have beneficial properties on its quality.

It is also a scientific evidence that nutrition has a direct impact not only on the ability to sleep well and on your energy level. Food choices, in fact, play a key role in many other aspects of your life, such as, for example, cardiovascular health and blood sugar levels.

For this reason it is essential to always consult a doctor or nutritionist before making drastic changes in your diet.

Learn below about foods that can help you improve the quality of your rest, and lots more.

We’ve prepared some advice for you to improve the quality of your rest.

1. Kiwis

Kiwis are a low-calorie food rich in many nutrients. One fruit contains only 42 calories, but alone it brings about 70% of the daily requirement of vitamin C and about 25% of vitamin K.

Eating Kiwi has a beneficial effect on your digestive health, thanks to the intake of fibers it owns. It is also rich in antioxidants, Vitamin C and carotenoids, soothing elements that reduce inflammation.

The ability of kiwis to improve sleep quality has been scientifically demonstrated. They have a high level of serotonin. Serotonin is a hormone produced by our organism, which affects the mechanisms of regulating sleep cycles.

Thanks to the intake of serotonin that kiwis provide, they are considered an excellent food to eat before going to sleep. Some publications of the National Library of Medicine also link the intake of antioxidants with positive effects on the quality of rest.

Some researchers checked the change in the quality of rest in 24 adults, after consuming 2 kiwis an hour before going to sleep every night, for 4 weeks. At the end of the study, participants fell asleep faster than the previous 4 weeks. The time it took to fall asleep was almost halved (-42%).

To date, science is seeking other evidence to officially state that kiwis take direct action in improving sleep quality more generally. However, eating 1 or 2 kiwis before bedtime will help you fall asleep more quickly.

2. Oilseeds

The family of oilseeds consists in foods often considered excellent for sleep, and more. In particular we talk about nuts, almonds, pistachios and cashews.

Eating almonds regularly, for example, has been associated with a reduction in the risk of contracting some important diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and heart problems. This benefit has been linked to the beneficial mix of the elements of which they are composed: monounsaturated fats, fiber and antioxidants.

Oilseeds also contain melatonin and other minerals essential for the proper functioning of some mechanisms of our body. Magnesium, phosphorus, manganese and reblofavin (or vitamin B2) are the main ones.

And it is precisely thanks to melatonin that such foods are considered beneficial for the quality of sleep. In fact they help to adjust the internal clock of your body, preparing it for a deep sleep.

There are a lot of researches about the correlation between almonds and sleep, and much more in progress.

However, clinical studies have shown that the combination of melatonin, magnesium and zinc helps elderly people suffering from insomnia to sleep more and better.

3. Cherry juice

Cherry juice has important beneficial effects on health. First of all, it offers your body some important nutrients such as magnesium, phosphorus and potassium.

In addition, it is a source of antioxidants. The intense color that characterizes the cherry is due to some pigments called anthocyanins, which are precisely antioxidants. These pigments seem to protect against capillary fragility and against various aging processes or cellular modifications caused by oxygen.

Cherry is also rich in flavonols, considered among the most powerful antioxidants for their molecular structure.

Many scientific studies have correlated this food with important benefits on rest, demonstrating how sleep quality of the selected sample of adults could change by drinking 1 to 2 cups of cherry juice per day.

The US National Library of Medicine published an interesting study of a sample of adults suffering from insomnia. Each had 240 ml of cherry juice drunk 2 times a day, for 2 whole weeks.

Their sleep improved considerably, increasing about 84 minutes compared to what they normally slept. Improvement that impacted not only the duration but also the quality of their rest.

These benefits were also directly related to the concentration of melatonin that this food possesses (the hormone that regulates the circadian rhythm and promotes healthy sleep). It seems to be higher than the quantity contained on average in other foods.

Moreover, the presence of antioxidants, of which cherry juice is rich, amplifies the calming and beneficial effect for sleep that melatonin induces.

4. White rice

Science has carried out several studies on the evening intake of carbohydrates and the impact they have on health in general and on the quality of rest.

While for many cereals the results are sometimes unclear, as far as rice intake is concerned, there is no doubt: white rice improves sleep quality.

The SleepFoundation.org published an interesting study on this subject involving 1848 Japanese adults , with different eating habits. For some of them rice represented the main food, others preferred bread and others noodles.

The study showed that those who ate rice slept more and better than those who used bread or noodles.

This result goes in the direction of confirming what has already been said in some previous studies: eating foods with a high glycemic index about 4 hours before going to sleep, helps the sleep phase.

But pay attention. This consideration cannot be applied to any food with a high glycemic index.

Sugary drinks and sweets are also foods with a high glycemic index. But taking them has absolutely not the same beneficial effect on your rest or even worst, on your health. On the contrary, such foods would worsen the quality of your sleep!

Also be careful not to overdo it with white rice. Due to its low fiber level and poor nutritional intake that distinguishes it, starting to eat it that every day could generate other types of compensation.

5. Passionflower

Native to tropical and subtropical areas, passionflower is known in herbal medicine for its therapeutic and healing properties. In fact it has been one of the most used natural remedies for disorders of the nervous sphere.

Thanks to its calming and relaxing action, passionflower can help you mitigate anxious forms and stress. It is a “green” sedative and it is able to improve insomnia.

It is the flavonoids that give passionflower very useful calming properties. These chemical compounds act on the central nervous system. In particular, they would be able to interact positively with the spinal cord area, our sleep centers.

In addition, it stimulates the production of Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid, that is, amino acids produced by our brain to counteract stress and states of strong arousal, as explained by the article published by the US National Library of Medicine.

It’s simple to understand how this fruit can promote deep relaxation states and contribute to the improvement of the speed of falling asleep.

A positive effect on sleep of infusion intake has been scientifically proven, thanks to a study carried out in 41 adults who saw a significant improvement in the quality of their sleep, already after 1 week of intake of the infusion.

6. Chamomile

Chamomile is a centuries-old medicinal herb already known in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

It is known for its flavonoids, a class of very powerful antioxidants, with calming power over those inflammations that often cause chronic diseases, such as cancer and heart problems.

There is also evidence that drinking chamomile strengthens the immune system, reduces anxiety and depressive states, and improves skin quality.

In 2011, a study was carried out on 34 adults to demonstrate a correlation between chamomile intake and improved rest quality. A cup of chamomile extract has been taken 2 times a day for a portion of the adults, for 28 days.

The results were interesting. Those who regularly took the drink fell asleep faster and had much shorter night waking moments than those who took nothing. Results confirmed by another study, made specifically on the female population.

Drinking a chamomile infusion before bedtime, therefore, is certainly an experiment beneficial for you if you want to improve the quality of your rest.

Diet and rest: the Big Picture

Wishing to improve the quality of rest is natural, especially when leading a hectic lifestyle, in which the fast pace is certainly a source of great stress.

The solution, the one with a capital S, the one that suddenly allows us not to wake up at night and sleep deep sleep … well if we want to be realistic, that can’t be sought in a food.

Sleep is a complex mechanism, and is impacted by many factors including exposure to light, emotional tranquility, resting habits and the environment around us.

Nutrition is also a complex mechanism, made up of many small habits. And it can’t be a single food that makes a difference to the quality of your diet. It makes a cumulative effect, which depends on how much and what you eat for weeks, months and years.

The complexity of these 2 systems makes scientific research on their correlation very long and not at all trivial. As you may have understood from this article, there are many specific studies on the subject, but still science does not feel ready to make broader and more generalized statements.

If you really want to improve the quality of your rest and look for answers, start focusing on the “big Picture”, the habits that distinguish your daily life, both in terms of nutrition and rest.

Sleeping habits

When it comes to sleep habits we refer to the daily routines that are part of your daily life as well as the environment in which you sleep, factors that play a fundamental role in your ability to sleep well.

If it is true that some foods can support the functioning of sleep mechanisms, your daily habits and your bed environment hide many pitfalls that you need to learn to recognize.

An example is brightness. If your room is too bright or if you submit yourself to electronic devices when you get to bed, you have to know that you will find it much more difficult to fall asleep. In fact, the process of producing melatonin in your body could be negatively impacted, with the consequences that unfortunately you know very well.

The same goes for noise. And that’s not all.

If it is well known that artificial light and noise can disturb your sleep, it is much less known that the greatest causes of disturbed sleep reside right in your bed.

The mattress you are lying on and the pillow on which you rest your head are fundamental elements when it comes to the quality of your rest. Both have a direct impact on the sleep position you take overnight.

Did you know that many of the sleep disorders result from incorrect posture or a wrong pillow? Read our article – Sleeping position: the impact on your health – to find out how to improve your sleep position

Get ready for a good chamomile, turn off your tablet and browse your favorite book. Lie comfortably on your bed and rest your head on the pillow you deserve: enjoy you rest.

Nightingold daily operates to improve each customer’s resting experience, offering a pillow development service tailored to each individual customer and their specific needs.

Discover the Nightingold world and its revolutionary bespoke pillow creation service.

We can helping in solving your sleep disorders and improving the quality of your life!