Some people are accustomed to using very high pillows when they sleep. A new study has found that using excessively high pillows may induce spontaneous vertebral artery dissection, which is one of the causes of stroke. Researchers point out that high pillows are not without worries, and people should be more careful when choosing pillows.
Researchers from Japan’s National Cardiovascular Center and other institutions recently published an article in the European Stroke Journal, explaining that spontaneous vertebral artery dissection is an arterial vascular disease with unclear causes.
Since many patients experience neck and occipital pain upon waking, and some have a habit of using high pillows, they decided to investigate whether there is a correlation between this disease and the use of high pillows.
They studied 53 patients with spontaneous vertebral artery dissection treated at a Japanese medical institution between 2018 and 2023, and selected 53 patients with other diseases during the same period as a control group.
They investigated the height of the pillows these individuals typically used. Based on the opinions of relevant experts, the researchers defined pillows over 12 centimeters in height as high pillows, and those over 15 centimeters as extremely high pillows.
The survey showed that in the group with spontaneous vertebral artery dissection, 18 people used pillows higher than 12 centimeters, while only 8 people in the control group did. Specifically, for pillows over 15 centimeters, 9 people in the patient group used extremely high pillows, compared to only 1 person in the control group.
The researchers stated that this indicates a correlation between pillow height and the occurrence of spontaneous vertebral artery dissection.
The researchers noted that the onset of spontaneous vertebral artery dissection in some patients might be due to the use of excessively high pillows. When using high pillows, the degree of neck bending is greater, especially during movements such as turning over, which can easily damage blood vessels. Therefore, excessively high pillows should be avoided.
