Hi misterawesome,
Welcome to the Mattress Forum! :).
Thanks for the post, moving from stomach to side sleeper, big difference for shoulders / neck, etc. Additionally, i am familiar with the pillows you mentioned, but more on that later in the post.
Regarding selecting a pillow, the situation is the same as selecting a mattress, in that there are far too many variables involved to be able to select a pillow for you. However, I can certainly make some suggestions that may be helpful.
There are even more options in pillows I think than in mattresses, and most of us have been guilty at one time or another of purchasing some “less than stellar” offerings at department stores. There is a pillow thread here, and it links to many good posts about pillows and the different materials commonly used.
The key, of course, is to maintain a more natural cervical/upper thoracic alignment, but not all of us have what many physicians might describe as “normal” curvature in this region.
For sleeping on your side, it is imperative to maintain a pillow of sufficient enough thickness and substantial enough in filling to not collapse and have your head sink too much laterally. When you sleep on your back as well as your side, you generally want the pillow to be a bit thinner so that you’re not sleeping with too much forward flexion. That is why “shapeable” pillows (ones with filling that can be moved into different levels of thickness) are popular for people who sleep on their side and back. Down, shredded foams (latex, polyfoam and memory foam), buckwheat hulls, kapok, wool, silk, synthetic fibers, and flax seed are just a few of the offerings in this category. Additionally, many of these styles of pillows are available with an inner casing that allows accessibility to the fill to allow removal of the fill material in order to customize thickness.
One tip for side sleepers is to place a large pillow or body pillow in front of you and rest your free arm on this pillow. This takes some of the stress off of the neck/shoulder complex. Additionally, you may wish to experiment with placing a pillow behind your shoulders when sleeping upon your side. This allows you to lean back slightly against the pillow, effectively abducting your scapula and rolling your shoulder joint forward a bit, and this can also help relieve some stress for you.
In the end, it does come down to quite a bit of experimentation, but you’ll want to be sure that you’re considering a product using more durable materials.
Of the three pillows mentioned, and given your height weight, the zoned latex pillow is probably the closest to one that would give you the support needed, the other two are more in the shapable pillows and is hard to gauge how they will do for you. The Malouf zoned is a talalay latex pillow, but the zoning is really a marketing issue and any “talalay latex pillow” will do the same thing and if you search some of our trusted members you will find Talalay latex pillows, quite possibly at better prices.
Let me know if you find anything that works for you, or if you have other questions.
Thanks again
Sensei