Disabilities, whether physical or mental, born-with or caused later, can affect all aspects of your life.
Most people in the world won’t be able to understand what you have to live through and how you have to adjust parts of your life to accommodate your disability. These accommodations you make vary depending on your type of disability, but often they include promoting comfort and ease to complete daily tasks.
Sometimes, something as small as a well-constructed pillow to sit on can be one such accommodation that changes your life for the better.
Why Should Disabled People Consider Utilizing Pillows To Sit On?
For many, physical disabilities often include pain as a side effect. This pain can range in location, frequency, and intensity, but for most, it is long-lasting.
Dealing with chronic pain on a consistent basis is fatiguing and extremely draining on your mental state. Therefore, finding little things that can help bring instant relief and long-term aid to your pain can be a huge blessing to your life.
Listed below are just a few of the many benefits disabled people can find by using a pillow to sit on.
Relieve Pressure Sores
Pressure sores, also sometimes called bed sores or pressure ulcers, are caused when someone has been staying in the same position for too long and damages the skin around the area where their body is receiving the most weight and pressure. For people who have disabilities, especially wheelchair users, it is a common occurrence and a painful one.
Luckily, we have ergonomic cushions that can help! This cushioning provides pressure relief by distributing the weight around and giving the sore and affected pressure point some relief and time to heal.
Soothe Back Pain
Back pain is a pressing issue among those who find themselves sitting for long portions of the day. Part of the pain felt can be attributed to not knowing proper sitting posture, but for those with disabilities, that is likely not their main concern.
Cushions are an easy and reliable way to soothe lower back pain and tailbone pain. By positioning the user in a better posture, they are already taking pressure off of their lower back and hips with back support. Cushions like these can be used everywhere, from car seats to office chairs to recliners to support proper spinal alignment.
This, and cushion allowing for easy weight distribution, also allows for better blood circulation. Overall, helping current pain and starting the process to fend off worsening issues in the future.
Provide An Overall Sense Of Comfort
Cushions, while helpful for a myriad of health reasons, are also something that can provide an overall sense of comfort and wellbeing for anyone.
Comfort is something that should be available for all, not just able-bodied people. Those with disabilities, even ones that don’t necessarily correlate with the health benefits of a cushion to sit on, can still appreciate the support and relaxing atmosphere a cushion can bring.
What Is The Proper Sitting Position?
Proper sitting position comes down to a few main adjustments.
One, your feet should be able to reach the floor or footrest of your wheelchair easily, with heels flat. If this isn’t the case, then you can try to adjust the chair and/or attain an under foot desk rest to help achieve the same result. Otherwise, with dangling legs, you’ll find yourself more at risk of lower back and hip pain.
Another adjustment is that your hips should be higher than your knees at all times when sitting. Having them at the same level increases pressure on your lower back and hips and can cause extreme discomfort as you continue. To achieve this height, using a memory foam seat cushion is highly beneficial and is one of the easiest ways to fix the problem.
Additionally, you should try to sit as straight as you can, with your neck and back in line and shoulders pulled back. Some seats allow for this naturally as the backrests are built to hold your body to that degree, but if the chair doesn’t help with this, you can always gain a back pillow that attaches to your chair for lumbar support. It's also ideal to keep your arms at a 90-degree angle on armrests to prevent upper back and neck pain.
The Best Pillows For Disabled People To Sit On
Your option of pillows can depend on the type of help you’re looking for and the disability you have. All will relieve pressure on your lower back, but some are specifically targeted for certain areas and have other benefits.
Wheelchair Cushions
As with people, wheelchairs can come in all shapes and sizes. Yet, there is an overwhelming agreement that “normal” wheelchairs by themselves are not all that comfortable. Being static for so long puts you at high risk for this discomfort, another is back pain, and finally, there are pressure sores to deal with.
However, the best wheelchair cushions can change all that, turning your chair into one comfortable ride.
Our Wheelchair Seat Cushion uses high-density foam to specifically target areas plagued by hip, back, leg, tailbone, and sciatic pain. Highly recommended by healthcare professionals, it allows your body heat to mold the cushion to your shape while using cooling ventilation holes to relieve pressure.
Additionally, our gel wheelchair cushion is light and easily portable, with a soft exterior and non-slip bottom, perfect for getting in and out of your chair. You can even take the gel cushion with you and use it for other seating arrangements if you so choose.
Seat Cushions
Perhaps the most versatile option, seat cushions are a great way to get instant pain relief anywhere, at any time.
Instead of targeting a specific area of pain related to sitting for too long, seat cushions help general pain relief focused around your tailbone, legs, hips, lower back, and butt by minimizing overall pressure in your lower extremities.
Our Memory Foam Coccyx Seat Cushion is here to help! With 100% memory foam and a u-shaped cutout design, the cushion helps with pain relief by using your body heat to mold itself specifically to your shape. It also helps with blood circulation and promotes proper posture due to its customized support. It’s light, easy to carry, and comes with a removable, heavy-duty cushion cover. Best of all, it too is recommended by orthopedic doctors!
Wedge Cushions
Wedge coccyx cushions have a lot of the same benefits as seat cushions, but their shape allows for your body to take a more specific, forced position.
The shape tilts your pelvis forward, thus coercing your body to relieve pressure off of your back, and can help with sciatica pain. The position also naturally wills your knees to be lower than your hips, which is a part of proper seating posture and helps with blood circulation.
Interested? Our Memory Foam Wedge Cushion gives you this extra push to help correct posture and help with back, leg, and hip pain. It is 100% memory foam, portable and lightweight with a carrying strap to allow for easy transportation, and is hypoallergenic!
Our wedge cushion responds to body heat and molds to you while still being able to keep its natural shape, ensuring that the shape will always bounce back. It is also machine washable and has a non-skid bottom, an especially helpful function for those with disabilities!
Pillow Material: Which Is Best?
The material of your pillow can change what type of relief you receive and what type of long term benefits you gain down the road. Below are the four most common types of pillow materials used for cushions that give extra support.
Gel-Infused
This pillow material is unbeatable for relief associated with sitting for extremely long periods of time. This is due to the fact that while the cooling gel adapts to you, it distributes body weight around better than any other material.
Gel-foam options are also denser than the other options, meaning that even as it adapts to your shape, it will remain firm and supportive. The material is also inherently more breathable and keeps the user cool.
Memory Foam
Memory foam is the more popular option, as it is considered to be the most comfortable and plush. It has a reputation as a material that allows the user to “sink in” to it, making it soft yet supple.
It is the fabric that will adapt most quickly and efficiently to your body, then after use, bounce back to its original shape without issue. It offers comfort plus durability.
”Regular” Foam
Other types of foam cushions offer quick, soft, and easy comfort. But this doesn’t mean it’s necessarily long-lasting, especially when you compare our memory foam and gel-infused cushions.
These types of cushions are best for those who are up and down a lot in their workspace and are inherently less worried about long-term use but still want some comfort and a small amount of pain relief.
Air
Air cushions are one of the lightest options to choose, making them easy to transport. While not as comfortable or stable as the other options listed above, it can actually be very good at temporarily relieving pressure off of your back and hips.
Summary
To conclude, sitting on pillows can provide many people with health benefits, but disabled people, in particular, can find aid for their afflictions caused by long periods of being in a sitting position.
There are many different types of cushions to look for and try, each with its own specific target areas and specialties. You only have to go and look! Choose comfort today.
Sources:
https://medlineplus.gov/pressuresores.html
https://www.rehab.research.va.gov/mono/wheelchair/ferguson-pell.pdf
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