You hear a lot about how the right mattress or a new mattress can help you sleep better, toss and turn less and give you proper support. But what you don't hear a lot about is just how important the proper pillow can affect your sleep, posture and overall health.

A lot of time, money and energy is spent in the mattress industry to convince you that you need to replace your mattress, so this tends to be the main focus of consumers. In the San Francisco Bay Area Mattress market, the only pillow you really hear about in the media is the Oxygen Pillow from European Sleepworks. The vast majority of ads you will hear on TV, Radio and the internet will be from the big box mattress stores telling you that if you are tossing and turning or not sleeping well, you need a new mattress.

However, a pillow is just as important as a new mattress or a properly supportive mattress. In fact, I would go so far as to say if you are tossing and turning or not sleeping well, waking up with pain, it would be better to try a new pillow first. Why?

First of all, pillows will break down much faster than a mattress. Consumers rarely will purchase and use pillow protectors when they purchase a new memory foam pillow or organic latex pillow, so the pillow is subject to much more wear and tear than the mattress. Heat and sweat, drool, dead skin cells from your hair and scalp, oils from your face and hair. These factors work to breakdown a pillow quite quickly. And its the last culprit many consumers consider when they start to suffer a lack of sleep, waking with pain or snoring.

When shopping around the San Francisco Bay Area, Berkeley or Mountain View mattress stores, you will find a vast selection of pillow shapes, sizes and materials. What is the best pillow for you? That depends on many factors:

• The size of your body's frame: shoulder width, neck length.
• The firmness of your mattress
• Side or back sleeper
• Allergies
• Lifestyle choices such as vegan

In the Nest Bedding stores, we have many types of pillows. They are made with many types of materials to accommodate the different needs of consumers. They are:

• Kapok
• Memory foam
• Latex Foam
• Shredded Latex Foam
• Kapok and Latex
• PLA material
• Cotton and Kapok
• Buckwheat and Alpaca
• Buckwheat Hulls
• Millet Hulls

And besides all these different types of materials, we have many heights and lengths to accommodate the different physical needs of our customers.

Our staff at Nest Bedding is trained to help you choose the right type of pillow for your body and your needs. When buying a new mattress it is the perfect time to buy a new pillow, as your new bed will put your body in proper alignment and your old pillow may not work with the new alignment.