Hi Phoenix!
Thanks for the warm welcome. I have enjoyed reading this forum for the past several months. I would be remiss in not thanking your and your forum for helping inform me towards making a decision on some toppers and then a mattress from a couple of companies that I never would have heard of otherwise!
Regarding the pillow talk, I miss the days when I could sleep on the fattest, puffiest down pillow and suffer no ill effects from it. My husband took over the down pillows after my accident, and I spent months trying to find something that worked for me. That is the most ironic piece here. The tempurpedic contour works for me. The compression is perfect for the nerve pain and holds my head immoble. I am rejecting it because it is 6 years old, has flattened and I refuse to go through another off gassing with this memory foam. Especially since I’ve taken such pains to make everything in my living area as natural as possible. I am a bit of a health nut, and despite the injury, am very active and athletic. Waking up with shooting pains up the side of my neck and head can make me pretty useless that day.
So I read through all the threads that you highlighted (thank you for that), and learned from one that the wool bolster pillow is made by Holy Lamb, so I gave them an email shout out. The only thing that makes me not want to order it, is that it doesn’t have a zipper, so there is no way to adjust the level of wool, or fluff the wool to keep it from felting. I like the shape of the kapok contour pillow Ive been sleeping on for 3 nights, I don’t think I like the kapok itself, so I think I’m going to place an order with DIY bedding and order a couple of lbs of wooly bolas to stuff the contour pillow with, take the kapok and stuff my dogs bed with it (she’ll appreciate not sleeping on poly batting anymore, too) and see what happens with that. I do think wool is going to be the best material to press against the back of my skull and being able to adjust the levels and take the wool bolas out to fluff will make a difference. I really appreciate the attention you give to each poster, and the care you take in making sure they weigh in all the factors of choosing products for themselves. It truly is not one size fits all, and everybody is so different in preferences and sizes and health issues. Thanks for taking a little of the frustration out of it, and providing a very helpful resource.
So, about memory foam’s broad meaning, can anyone name ~3 companies that have very different memory foam (but they need to make shredded filling/pillows)? Ignoring the extra filler (like alternative down and kapok), it just seems like memory foam is a term used for a huge spectrum of foams. I’ve tried to research memory foam and look at companies ~ingredients and how their memory foam looks, but after a lot of time, it all just looks the same but I’m sure it’s quite different.
I looked through the verified vendors, basically all of them and I found very very few shredded memfoam pilows. There’s tons of shredded latex. And there’s plenty of shredded memfoam pillows online, but I don’t get the differences at all.
2nd question: what can you add to shredded latex to make it mold together more and feel softer when compressed, and less slippery. If I can’t find a good memfoam replacement then I’m gonna need to find a way to make shredded latex work.
- Slippery / molding\shaping: If I only have 1 shredded latex pillow, and try to bunch it up, it all just fucks off and does whatever it wants
- Hard: If my head weighed like 2 pounds I think the latex would feel like a cloud, but once laying down it feels so compressed that it kind of hurts (I guess I can try more latex fill, but it won’t solve it).
I’m a new member, so excuse me if I’m missing any etiquette. I’ve personally had a great experience with bamboo pillows. Specifically Sova, although I think they may be discontinued. It’s quite firm for side sleeping and very friendly with allergies
Boxypants, it’s great that you like your pillow! And your comment provides me the perfect opportunity to provide some information regarding “bamboo pillows” - a bit of a Public Service Announcement I’ve been meaning to post for some time.
When a pillow is referenced as “bamboo”, this is actually reflective of the fabric encasement of the pillow. Specifically, that bamboo was the source of the cellulose that was eventually reconstituted to form the rayon fiber. Pillows using this sort of outer covering are quite common, but they can contain many different sorts of interior “stuffing”, such as polyfoam, memory foam, latex, or various types of synthetic fibers. You can also find mattresses and toppers using covers (ticking) that contain rayon sourced from bamboo, and they’ll often even embroider the term “bamboo” into the covering.
The main reason I bring this up is that it’s a common misconception, specifically with the “bamboo pillows”, that they contain stuffing of actual bamboo and are natural products. One of the larger groups that tend to promulgate this misconception would be the traveling road shows that frequent places like warehouse clubs. I’ve had many customers purchase a pillow from one of these shows, fully believing their new pillow was natural and from all plant sourced material, when in reality it was shredded memory foam with a rayon outer covering. And there’s nothing wrong with a shredded memory foam pillow, if that’s what suits your particular needs and tastes. I only bring this up because the misconception is quite prevalent with consumers, and you need to make sure that you also know what is inside of any pillow you’re considering to make sure the material matches your sleeping style and demands.