Core Products Original Tri-Core Firm-Cervical Support Pillow for Neck, Shoulder, & Back Pain Relief-Ergonomic Orthopedic Contour Pillow for Back and Side Sleep-Assembled in USA-Firm, Midsize

Normally I would not give a product 5 stars if I didn't think that it was perfect, but this product is an exception.In early June I woke up one morning with a sore neck. A day later the area around my shoulder blade was extremely painful. The next day, my elbow started hurting. I'm not someone who usually has aches and pains, so I just figured that I had some kind of injury that would go away on its own. A week later, the pain was no better so I called my family physician to set up an appointment. The soonest that I could get an appointment was a week and half out. Several days after calling for the appointment, the pain was getting worse so I went to one of the immediate care places in the area. The doctor there said that I had three totally unrelated problems - wry neck, an injured rotator cuff, and tendonitis. It seemed strange that I would suddenly go from having no pain related problems to having three problems, but I went ahead and tried the exercises and prescription strength anti-inflammatory that he prescribed. Neither did anything to relieve the pain.The night before I was scheduled to see my family physician, the pain in my shoulder blade and elbow was bad enough that I could not get to sleep. I reached over my shoulder and started to press in various places to try to pinpoint where the shoulder pain was so that I could show my doctor the next day. Suddenly the pain in my shoulder blade and elbow went away. Having the pain go away in my shoulder blade was surprising, but not nearly as surprising as having the pain in the elbow go away. After a few minutes, the pain started to come back. I pressed on the same spot, and the pain once again went away. The next day when I saw my doctor and mentioned this, he said that I had a rhomboid trigger point and that trigger points could cause pain to be felt in areas other than at the trigger point itself. He prescribed various exercises that I could do to reduce the pain.The exercises made the pain bearable for a few more weeks, but gradually they became less and less effective. I researched rhomboid trigger points and found that massage therapy sometimes helps so I booked an appointment with a massage therapist. He gave me an intensive deep tissue massage. That made the pain go away... for two days. I then decided to try a chiropractor. The first appointment helped... for two hours. The second appointment helped... for one hour.I went with my wife to visit family three hours away. While there, the pain was so bad that I had to go back to the hotel room and lay with an ice pack on my shoulder blade to make it bearable. Again, I am not someone who usually has a lot of trouble with pain. I've had wisdom teeth cut out and didn't even need a Tylenol. But this constant pain was getting pretty old. I went to the chiropractor once again, and it helped, but this time the pain relief literally lasted less than five minutes. I called my family physician again, but was unable to get an appointment for two weeks.A few days later, the pain was so bad that I literally could not type or drive for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Since I still had a week and a half to go until I could get in to see my family physician, I went back to the chiropractor and told him that the treatments were just not working and that we needed to do something else. He said that I could have a pinched nerve at the C7 vertebrae. He (and the other two doctors plus massage therapist) had previously ruled that out since I was missing some of the classic symptoms. He said that the next thing was to send me to a spine specialist. Since the first thing that the specialist would probably want to do would be to get a cervical MRI, the chiropractor went ahead and ordered one so that the results would be available on the first visit to the specialist.Several days later, I showed up at the hospital for my scheduled MRI appointment. The pain at that point was bad enough that for the last several nights, I had not been able to sleep for more than a few hours a night. The MRI technician carefully positioned my head and neck and began the MRI. After several minutes of lying on the table perfectly motionless, I started to fall asleep. Anyone who has had an MRI knows that listening to the extremely loud sounds of MRI equipment is not exactly a relaxing experience. The reason that I started to fall asleep was because the pain was gone. After several sleepless nights, I was so exhausted that it didn't matter that the MRI equipment was pounding in my head. As I lay there on the MRI table, I started to wonder what could have made the pain go away. I'm no expert on MRI's but I had never heard of them being used for pain relief. It dawned on me that maybe it was the way that the MRI technician had carefully placed my head and neck. As soon as I got home, I went on Amazon and searched for cervical pillows. I found this one and placed an order with overnight shipping.The next day, I got a call from the chiropractor who said that the results of the MRI had come back. I was diagnosed with spondylosis and probable foraminal stenosis. He made an appointment for me with a spine specialist, but the soonest opening was in three weeks. The pillow came in the same day. It was uncomfortable for my neck when I first tried it, but I stuck with it for several hours before going back to my regular pillow. The next morning, I woke up pain free but the pain returned a few hours later.That night, I stuck with the pillow for most of the night. The next morning I again woke up pain free, but this time the pain relief lasted the whole day! After living with increasingly severe pain for two and a half months, I had finally found something that seemed to work. Three weeks have passed since the pillow came in and I finally went to see the spine specialist today. He said that since I had not had any pain problems for the last several weeks, to just keep doing what I am doing and that I did not need to see him again.So what things about the pillow are not perfect? The pillow barely fits into a standard size pillow case. That, in itself, would not be a problem, but I have to use an anti-allergy pillow cover because I am allergic to dust mites. If you put a standard size pillow cover on the pillow in addition to the pillow case, it scrunches up the smaller neck support to the point where it does not work right. I worked around this by ordering a 30 by 30-Inch Allersoft Square Cotton Pillow Cover (also from Amazon). The very loose fit of the pillow cover on the pillow allows for enough extra material that your head can still fit down in the head cradle without scrunching up the smaller neck support. Also, the side sleeping parts of the pillow do not seem as comfortable as my regular pillow. Still, for giving me pain relief after two and a half months of increasing pain, I give this product FIVE STARS!!

This is the by far the best cervical pillow I have tried. Foam works for a short time but gets too stiff and really becomes uncomfortable over time. This pillow is flexible yet firm, breathable fabric and pliability make it fantastic! I highly recommend this pillow.I broke my neck several years ago and have tried many different ways to have a comfortable sleep. This pillow has answered most of my needs (so far, I have had it a short time)Honestly - the cotton/poly blend works so much better than those other synthetic materials that are used. This also allows for easy cleanup - and a quick toss in the dryer (with 2 tennis balls) makes it easy to care for.Thank you so much for designing something so practical !!

About a couple years ago I began experimenting with pillows, because the standard pillows I had were annoying me in a number of ways. They were too soft, even the supposedly "extra firm" pillows I bought. So when I slept on my side, I'd have to fold the side of the pillow under itself in order to get any decent firmness. And invariably over time even that wouldn't work, because the material would always wear out. I often found myself sleeping with my arm tucked under the pillow, but that would cause my arm to lose blood circulation. It was really sub-optimal no matter what I tried and no matter what pillow I used. I'm a light sleeper, too, so that made it even worse.Then I tried out one of those memory foam pillows with the two bumps in it. Actually, I think I bought a cheap foam rubber version rather than true memory foam. It was a lot more firm than the normal pillows, so I thought it would do well. Pretty quickly, however, I found myself waking up with a stiff, sore neck. It was so bad that I just couldn't even turn my head any more than about 20 degrees. And that was every single day practically, for almost a year. Memory foam or latex foam would have done the same thing, I believe.Finally I decided to buy one of these Tri-core pillows. Immediately, the next day my neck pain had completely gone away. I thought it was a fluke, but I've had this pillow for about a month now, and so far no neck pain.What I really like about it is its firmness. It's about as firm as you can get without it being hard. It makes all the regular "extra firm" pillows seem like they're actually "extra soft". And firmness is a good thing. Without that firmness, your head just collapses down into the bed, and it causes your neck to get bent at an awkward angle, which leads to neck pain and sleeping problems.On the other hand, you don't want it to be too firm. That would just cause pain. This Tri-core pillow has just enough give (softness) to allow you to rest easily without pressure points digging into your face, ears, and head. I like that.I'm a side and back sleeper. The instructions say to sleep right on the edge of the pillow if you're sleeping on the side, and in the middle of the pillow if you're sleeping on your back. But I don't always find myself following those instructions. I just naturally find a "sweet spot" somewhere between the middle and edge when sleeping on my side. But sleeping perfectly on the edge is good too. The point I'm making is that there are subtle variations in the depth and angle of the pillow and the way it makes you feel. You may have to play with it a bit to find out what makes you feel the best.I don't know how this pillow will perform over the long-term, since I've only had it a month now. But so far it doesn't appear to be losing any of its firmness. Or if it is, it's not enough to really notice. I'm sure it won't last forever. But at this price, you can afford to buy a new one when that day comes.I highly recommend giving it a try.UPDATE June 11, 2012:---------------------It has been a while since I reviewed this pillow, and I've had a chance to try other pillows since then. It must be about a year and a half or so since I bought this product. I've been using it ever since. Here's an update.First of all, I want to say that the product has held up remarkably well. There's not much softening, wearing, or indentation of the pillow at all. It remains very firm despite using it more or less continuously the entire time. So that's very good.But it hasn't been all good. At first it was great. But little by little the pillow started annoying me in different ways. Mostly, the trapezoidal depression in the middle of the pillow proved more difficult to tolerate than I wanted.I would often wake up in the middle of the night, because I was fighting with the pillow to find the best spot for my head. You can't just roll over in your sleep, because you'll end up in the hole with no support whatsoever.It's great if you never roll over.It's also good if you only sleep on your back and one side but not the other side. For example, if you go back and forth between sleeping on your back and your left side, but never your right side, then that's okay. But going from the left to the right side is not going to be easy. And because it's not easy, it requires some thought, which will actually wake you up.Something else that annoyed me about this pillow was the thickness of the pillow on the sides. I'm all for support. Support is a real problem with most pillows. This pillow has super support. However, the fact that it was too thick for me meant that it felt a bit too firm at times. I wanted to compress the pillow down with my head, but because it's so firm, I couldn't.So if I were making a wish list of future improvements, I wish this pillow didn't have the hole in the middle. I just want a constant thickness throughout the pillow. And I would like it to be a bit less thick. And it would be nice if it had a thin top layer of memory foam or something just to relieve pressure points a bit better.Because of these irritations, I'm now removing one star. I used to rate it at 5 stars. I now rate it at 4 stars.On the plus side, it never caused neck problems. It was great in that respect. It is still a very good and dependable pillow that I recommend trying, especially for its price.In the meanwhile, I recently purchased an excellent pillow that solves all of the problems I've seen with pillows. It's called the IntelliPillow. It's made with "intelli-gel". You can find it at: [...]That IntelliPillow is much more expensive, but in my opinion at this time, no other pillow beats it. If you're trying one pillow after another with no luck, it might be better to buy the IntelliPillow and be done with it. Might save you money in the long run. I just wish Amazon was selling it so I could review it.Hope that helps!

At first I thought it’s a little weird but wow. After a night of good sleep, my neck feels amazing. I don’t have a good curve and could use some cervical decompression, and this gives me just the right support on the slimmer side. The other side is great for phone scrolling. I am a back sleeper only, for reference. It’s been about a week now and so happy I got this pillow.