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After long days and nights on the road, every driver looks forward to having a comfortable place to lay their head down. Making sure your sleeper is a comfortable spot to rest when you set the brakes at the end of a shift is key to staying rested and ready to hit the road again. A lot of people spend oodles of money on expensive mattresses in an effort to make the sleep as restful as possible. What a lot of people neglect to think about, however, is the actual spot where they rest their head - their pillow!
“A pillow is a pillow” is a sentiment I have heard before from other drivers. After spending some time on a sensor-filled bed in a mattress store to measure my pressure points and sleep style, I learned quite the contrary. It was during this study that I discovered the need to spend more money on a pressure relieving, pressure sensitive memory foam pillow. I just about had a coronary when I saw the price, which was almost as much as some people spend on their mattresses they sleep on, but I will be the first to tell you that sleeping was believing and I never had a more restful nights sleep!
A night’s sleep on a memory foam pillow was usually fantastic, but I always had a problem with my head getting hot during the night. I would find myself flipping the memory foam pillow over throughout the night in order to maximize what little heat dispersal it was capable of. With a little research, it didn’t take long to find out this was a problem for most memory foam pillows, which gave way to the cooling memory foam pillow I am using now. The one I found (pictured with the blue cooling gel) takes care of all the problems a “hot-headed” sleeper like myself has, all the while remaining supportive and comfortable!
Even if you dish out the money for a premium mattress like a Tempur-Pedic or Minimizer, do not overlook the actual pillow that provides the head and neck support needed for a restful nights sleep. Spending the extra money and doing the research on finding the proper cooling pillow could make all the difference in being properly re-energized at the beginning of every shift. Make sure every minute of your time in the bunk counts and if you have an overheating problem like me, make sure to invest in a highly rated cooling gel pillow as well!