Buckwheat Pillow For Your Health

A buckwheat pillow can offer a one-stop solution to your quality of sleep, eliminating allergens from your pillow and preventing or easing neck, shoulder and back aches and pains while you sleep.

Note that I wrote the buckwheat pillow can provide this. If you don't know what to look for in a buckwheat pillow, you could actually disrupt your sleep, increase your allergens and continue to wake up in the morning with your neck, shoulder and back hurting.

You may have seen or heard the term buckwheat hull pillow. This is the type of buckwheat pillow that I am referring to in this article, one made from the hulls that protect the kernels for the buckwheat plant.

While I am on the topic of buckwheat hulls, the first thing you should make sure of when looking to buy a good buckwheat pillow is that you are purchasing a pillow where the buckwheat hulls used to fill the pillow form are organic and cleaned buckwheat hulls.

What is so good about a pillow made with buckwheat hulls? To illustrate the point, go lie down on your bed right now and try what I am going to describe next. (Be sure and pull back your bed cover and sheets just like you are going to bed.) Now, crawl into bed and lie down like you are going to sleep. While lying in your normal sleep position, take your most free arm and use your hand to feel around where your neck meets your shoulder.

Do you feel a "gap" between your neck and the bed. Think about it, your neck is suspended with tension in that position while you sleep. I know the gap between your neck and the bed might be small, but this is concentrating tension on your neck and shoulder and causing your back to not be quite aligned while you sleep.

Now enter the buckwheat pillow. The hulls that make up the inside of this pillow form to your natural contour and shape of your neck and shoulders - replacing the gap between your neck and the bed with a support structure that fits your natural shape. This naturally eliminates, eases or prevents body aches and pains brought about by sleeping and can help ease conditions like migraine headaches during sleep.

So the first benefit of the buckwheat hulls is that they provide for good orthopedic sleep health. The next benefit is buckwheat hulls can prevent or eliminate allergens from your pillow. Buckwheat is not a wheat, it is a fruit, so wheat allergies do not apply.

The hull exists to prevent natural harm from befalling the kernel. Think about it, the buckwheat hull is not something that dust mites like to hang out on as can be the case with the filler in other pillow forms.

There is a catch, however, and this is where knowing what to ask and look for when purchasing a buckwheat pillow is very important. The natural state of the hulls once the kernels are removed is to be covered with dust from the kernels. While the hulls themselves are not friendly to dust mites and other allergens, the kernel dust on the hulls are.

This is why you must make sure that the maker of your buckwheat pillow uses a proven process to clean the hulls. There are methods of "dry" cleaning through the use of vacuuming, "wet" methods where the hulls are triple-washed and combinations of the two. The important point is to make sure that your pillow manufacturer emphasizes the cleanness of the hulls used.

The other item from your pillow maker that you must insist upon is the use of organically grown buckwheat. If a buckwheat grower uses pesticides or other chemicals on the plants, you can guess where this stuff ends up. That's right - on the hull itself. Remember, you are laying your head down on everything used to make your pillow - starting with the natural products and how they were grown or harvested.

Where the buckwheat was grown is just as important to consider as whether it was grown organically and how well the hulls are cleaned. Just because buckwheat pillows may be more popular in a country does not mean the manufacturing process adheres to acceptable standards for cleaning or that the buckwheat plants are grown organically.

Also, imported pillows could end up being treated with chemicals or fumigated as part of the import process. For these reasons, Americans should buy buckwheat pillows from a manufacturer or pillow maker that uses hulls from buckwheat grown in the United States.

Other features of your buckwheat pillow that you should insist upon is the pillow should have a zipper to allow you to remove or add buckwheat hulls. This is especially important in getting the right amount of filler in the pillow so that it conforms properly for your head and shape.

Also make sure the fabric that makes up the pillow form is good quality and free from chemical treatments that could aggravate your allergies or cause skin problems.

All the best in purchasing your buckwheat pillow, if that is what you choose to do. If you have tips or information of your own that you would like to share on purchasing and using buckwheat pillows, please feel free to add a comment.