I just got an email that my backordered magic heartburn-relief pillow is shipping in this week instead of in February of next year, woot woot! When my food allergy medicine wears off, I start suffering from acid reflux, which screws up my sleep. I heard about a cool wedge pillow that is supposed to help, but it was backordered by months. It's basically an expensive wedge pillow (so you sleep at an angle) with an arm hole (to avoid t-rex arm), plus a slim body pillow (to allow for side-sleeping). Simple, but genius.
Typically, I just don't eat a couple hours before bed in order to avoid heartburn at night, but when my allergy meds wear off, that trick quits working. Apple cider vinegar has helped a lot (surprisingly), but that junk is nasty to have to drink every day. Anyway, if the pillow doesn't work, they charge a 10% recycle fee, but they let you keep it for like 3 months to try out, so I figured it was worth a shot. I'm not looking forward to having to sleep at a weird angle, but the reviews say you get used to it over time & that it works so well it's worth toughing out until you adapt. As a bonus, I finished up all of my late-night contractual IT projects last week, so I can go back to first-shift hours instead of night crew! Normal sleeping hours + a possible GERD-killing super pillow sound mighty nice right now. Boy does that make me sound like a lame adult, lol.
https://www.medcline.com
Okay so a review a few days in:
1. It's frickin' huge. You basically sleep at an angle from the waist up. Feels like it takes up almost half of one side of the bed. It's also a lot taller than I thought it would be. It's a pretty decent angle.
2. The hole for your arm is glorious. All beds should come up a cutout like that.
Dunno if this would work or not.
3. Downside is that your arm gets cold being out in the open air. You'll need your own blanket for your side of the bed that is large enough to also cover your hangy-outy arm (if your room is cold, that is).
4. It's basically a 3-part system: the wedge pillow, the pillow that goes in the hole, and the J-shaped body pillow. You angle from the waist up, slide your arm through the hole (or up, if you prefer), and then wrap the body pillow around under your head & wrap your legs around the lower part of the body pillow. I also have a weighted blanket and it is a pretty good combination so far! My bed is a memory foam bed...I dunno if you really need a memory foam bed if you plan on using the Medcline because you sleep on the Medcline from the waist up, so really only your legs are on the bed. Although the website says you only have to use the pillow for as many hours as you need to every night, so if you only get a heartburn attack for a few hours, you can push it off the side of your bed & go back to your regular pillow after that. I just use it all night because I don't want to have to wake up lol.
5. Based on the reviews, I thought it was going to be annoying to sleep on & would have taken awhile to get used to, but when I tried it out I actually ended up falling asleep & taking an hour nap on accident lol.
6. Other than your arm being exposed to the air & getting cold (which is a solvable problem), really my only real complaint is that the wedge is at such an angle that the skin under your ribs stays on it & your ribcage slides down, so you get a bit of a skin stretch. You can adjust it by where you put your srhips; I don't know if the pillow will kind of mold to my body over time or what, but that's really the only negative thing I have to say about it...just kind of grabs your ribcage skin as you slide down a bit & is a bit annoying. I suspect as the foam breaks in over time, that it won't be a problem, so I'll put a pin in this one. And you can play around with your sleeping position to help mitigate that effect.
7. To test it, I have had foods that would have normally made it impossible to sleep for the last few days...pasta with red sauce, lemonade, etc., ZERO problems. No GERD, no heartburn, no waking up choking, nada. Sure beats sleeping in a recliner!
8. I did wake up a couple times initially because I'd go to roll over & my arm would be stuck in the hole under the wedge pillow & it would kind of jolt me awake. I'm used to it now though. But it was weird for the first couple nights because I'd forget that I was sleeping on a strange pillow & be like what the crap is going on here lol.
9. I feel like the price could be a lot cheaper. I'm not complaining, as it solved my problem (and if you use reflux medicine, it probably pays for itself in pretty short order), but it's just a specially-shaped pillow; seems like they would sell a lot more of them at like $49 or something (I say that because I just saw one of those giant 5' oversized teddy bears for fifty bucks at the store that could probably be angled to work the same way lol).
Overall this is a simple & effect solution to a real problem. It's expensive, but isn't priced insane (a lot of the higher-end memory foam pillows go for $99, and this is under $300 for 3 pillows that are specially-made for heartburn), and the return policy is decent enough to warrant giving it a shot if you have these issues & have the budget available.