As humans we depend for our lives upon sleep mechanisms inside the brain (the body clock, the sleep center) resting the body and the brain by causing us to alternate between waking and sleep. However, in modern society, sleep disorders are becoming more and more common. Among the reasons for this are changes in lifestyle (night-time society); a decrease in our average sleeping time (which has shortened by 1 hour in 10 years); people going to bed later (50% of 3yr-olds go to bed after 10 o’clock at night); an increase in night working and shift working (1/3 of the working population are now shift workers); increased stress; and the ageing of society (more of us suffer from sleep disorders as we get older, with dementia sufferers being particularly badly affected).
Also, sleep disorders among children are becoming a serious problem, and are a cause of poor school results, impaired concentration, mood swings, raised blood pressure, and non-attendance at school.
In Japan about 24 million people, or about 20% of the population, suffer from some sort of sleep-related problem, and every night about one in five people suffers the misery of being unable to sleep. This is a serious problem affecting the whole of society. To solve sleep-related problems like these, it is important to optimize the sleeping environment.
We have for a long time been contributing to improvement of the sleeping environment by concentrating on the pillow.
The pillow is not just a piece of bedding that we put our head on when we go to sleep. Because the pillow determines the angle of the neck during sleep, its position and angle determine the position of the spine as a whole and also influence whether or not it is possible to turn over naturally and easily in one’s sleep. It is the crucial role of the pillow to make sure that the back vertebrae and the neck vertebrae are properly rested during sleep.