Where Can I Buy A Lumbar Support Pillow
I used each pillow for at least a full day, testing on a run-of-the-mill office task chair without lumbar support (the kind you might find on sale at a big-box store or office-supply store). After these full-day tests, I spent another two weeks switching more frequently between the pillows throughout each workday so that I could better compare them. To try to eliminate bias and reset my back, I took 20-minute breaks between tests to stand or pace. On some days, I switched back to my Steelcase Gesture chair for comparison. During these tests, I noted the following:
where can i buy a lumbar support pillow
The LoveHome Memory Foam Lumbar Support Back Cushion, our former top pick among lumbar support pillows, offers firm, contoured support for your lower back. It stays in place and is easy to position thanks to sturdy, adjustable, extendable straps that can fit chairs of all sizes. Everyone who used this cushion in our testing (in this and previous years) found it to be notably more comfortable than most other options, especially when they sat against it for hours at a time.
We appreciated the little details this pillow got right, such as the thick-woven cover, hefty zipper pull, and smooth zipper tread. But we were disappointed to see its short, 60-day return policy; we prefer pillows with a longer replacement guarantee and easy-to-contact customer support, such as our top pick from Everlasting Comfort. (We were unable to find any contact information for LoveHome.)
One study found that lumbar support distributed pressure over a wider body area when people were sleeping. This may help limit back pain and other back problems that can arise from a lack of lumbar support.
You know the feeling: It's 6 p.m. and you've shut your laptop for the day, only to get up from your desk with lower back pain so intense, you don't know if you're going to make it to that Happy Hour after all. You've gone too long without one of the best lumbar support pillows, and your back is feeling the burn.
Unforgiving office chairs, backless kitchen stools, and worn-out couches can all wreak havoc on our spine health. Layer on bad posture (aka, hunching over our laptops to better see our screens) and back pain can become brutal over time. Luckily, accessories like lumbar support pillows can help take a load off tired spines, alleviating pressure and reducing stress as you sit.
"Oftentimes, we sit at the edge of our chairs without any back support and end up slouched," says Jessica McManus, PT, FAAOMPT, physical therapist, functional medicine health coach, and owner of Full Circle Wellness PT. "When we use a lumbar support pillow or chair, it encourages us to scoot our bottoms all the way back into the chair and let our backs be supported by the back of the chair. This gives our back muscles a nice rest and encourages a better upright posture for our entire spine, while supporting our natural spinal curve in the lower back."
What do the best lumbar suport pillows have in common? For starters, the pillow should hug your natural spine curve. "These cushions are often more square or rectangle shape, with a gentle curve to them, and not so much like the thicker, log-shaped cushions," says McManus. These will improve your posture while resolving mild soreness throughout the day.
Health care practitioners rely on a variety of methods to improve the seated postures of their patients, and commonly lumbar support devices are prescribed. Numerous devices exist for use in office chairs or vehicles, including built-in static or variable controlled pads and lumbar support cushions [4,10,14-16]. A number of investigators have studied lumbar support pads and their effect on spinal posture and comfort [5,15,16].
De Carvalho and Callaghan [16] performed a radiological study on the effect of lumbar support prominences on spinal and pelvic postures in an automobile seat [16]. An increase in the depth of the support prominence was noted to significantly increase the extension of the intervertebral joints of the lumbar spine [16]. However, the investigators could not state whether comfort was affected over the long term and what changes could be expected in patients with LBP [16]. Moreover, Makhsous et al. [14] noted that a backrest fitted to the lower spine and reduced ischial support improved the position of the spine in healthy individuals. The total and segmental lumbar lordosis was maintained, the sacrum was rotated forward, and the lumbar intervertebral disc heights were increased. Again, any changes in patients with LBP could not be established.
While additional authors have investigated the effect of various support systems on bodily symptoms, much of this work has been performed on healthy individuals. Aota et al. [15] measured the biomechanical effects and comfort levels when using a lumbar support cushion that inflated from 0.5 to 8.0 cm thick in a continuous passive motion chair. They noted significant improvements in the subjective measures of LBP, stiffness and fatigue with use of the system in both static and dynamic states. Conversely, Carcone and Keir [17] noted that, while a lumbar pad measuring 9 cm thick best maintained the lumbar lordosis in sitting, participants tended to complain that it pushed their body forward, the result being a centre of pressure (CoP) that was more anteriorly located on the seat pan. In their study, participants also reported that configurations with less lordosis (i.e., less than 3 cm) were more comfortable [17]. Portable devices that do not account for the bulk of posterior pelvic soft tissue volume may push the lower body forward and distort the intended relationship between the seat pan features and the body [17]. The preferred degree of lordosis may be related to the pain state of the individual [17], in that comfort may be affected by the angular change as well as the interaction between the buttocks and the seat pan.
Similar to previous studies investigating healthy individuals [15,16], the results of this study indicated that a lumbar support pad was better at increasing (or preserving) the natural lumbar lordosis in sitting in both healthy individuals and patients with LBP. However, the reverse was seen in the thoracolumbar spine, whereby the neutral curvature was increased with the support pad compared to the standard chair. This is not surprising given the closed-chain nature of the seated task. Changes in one region of the spine may be compensated for by changes in other regions along the linked kinetic chain [28]. Furthermore, use of the lumbar pillow often did not allow participants to make contact with the upper part of the back rest, which may account for the thoracolumbar change. Measures of comfort were not negatively affected, suggesting that any compensations that were employed may have been acceptable.
In addition, the objective measure of comfort was improved in the current study with use of the pillow. The radius of the CoP shifting was lower for the lumbar support condition versus the standard chair in healthy individuals and in patients with LBP. However, the objective changes were not accompanied by subjective improvements, as the current study found no significant effects in reported comfort. While past studies have indicated that 30 minutes of sitting is adequate to determine comfort levels [22], it is possible that longer use of the device would have yielded more significant results. Carcone and Keir [17] noted subjective improvements in the middle lower back and upper back when using a lumbar support pillow for 15 minutes, however, the magnitude of the changes was small and clinical benefit is unknown.
This study did not include female participants as it has been shown that the female sitting posture is different from that of males [4]. While it would be interesting to study the effect of the lumbar support pillow on female participants, controlling for gender effects helped reduce the complexity of the analysis and the need for a much larger sample size. Moreover, the foundations of the chair were constrained, lowering arm rests and fixing the base to prevent rolling, to limit alternate strategies for changing comfort other than postural shifts with respect to the seat pan. Finally, while shorter term (30 minutes) static postural environments are reportedly adequate to determine comfort levels [22], the results may not generalize to longer seated exposure.
The first kind of lumbar support is the simple lumbar support pillow. Lumbar pillows are, well, pillows. They are designed to sit on your chair, between your lower back and the back of the chair, to give you lumbar support on a chair that otherwise does not have support for your lower back.
Foam lumbar pillows can be made up of simple pillow cotton, down, beads, or memory foam. They vary a lot in quality and longevity, and there are hundreds of not thousands of different designs on the market.
The previous two kinds of lumbar support are both items you buy and add to a simple chair, like a task chair, that has no lumbar support of its own. The second two kinds of lumbar support are features built into a chair, instead.
First, we have adjustable pillow-style supports. These can come in a few different varieties. Some chairs essentially come with a lumbar pillow attached to them, which can be moved up and down within a limited range of motion. Many gaming chairs offer this kind of pillow, attached with a strap that is threaded through purpose-built holes in the design of the chair itself.
The other style of adjustable lumbar supports is a lumbar pad attached to the chair, often behind the mesh of the back. This is featured in the MyoChair and other mesh-backed office chairs, for example. This lumbar support is built into the chair and can be adjusted up and down as well as in and out to provide the optimal level of support.
Need extra lumbar support? We've got your back. The Back Cushion is made from 100% Grid that's been molded to perfectly fit the contour of the lower back, and includes a cushion cover with securing strap to keep it in place. 041b061a72