Weight differential making mattress uncomfortable - any solutions? July 7, 2014 Subscribe I am struggling with back aches when I'm trying to sleep. I think it has something to do with my sleeping partner weighing about 60lbs more than me. What are the possible solutions - both short term (mattress toppers, etc.) and long term (new mattress)?Got a bad back? Sore and aching backs send more people to doctors than any other single complaint and the busier we get, the more we suffer. Sitting all day at a desk or standing in heels wreaks havoc on spinal alignment and sadly, we’re just not exercising enough to undo that damage. Sleep can help heal the abuse we throw at our backs but most of us don’t sleep on a supportive enough mattress to get the job done. And when we don’t give our backs the rest they need, mornings can be painful. If you and your mattress have lost that loving feeling, let’s talk about the difference between firmness and support and an important thing called conformability.
When a mattress sales person starts talking about support, she’s referring to how well a mattress can maintain an equally level surface for the lighter (head, hands and feet) and heavier (hips and torso) parts of your body. A very soft mattress can begin life as supportive but may lose the ability to bounce back over time. In some cases, a soft mattress that begins to sag (which often occurs in the center of the mattress) can cause back pain in and out of bed. An important thing to note is that some degree of sagging is a natural occurrence in every mattress as areas that support the heaviest parts of the body compress over time. While a supportive mattress is important, pay attention to how it conforms to your shape as well. Conformability describes how a mattress molds to the unique curves of your body. A mattress with good conformability attends to heavier and lighter areas equally, which relieves pressure point pain. A mattress that lacks conformability can stress your back by forcing it into an unnaturally flat position.
Your body is in alignment when the spine is (mostly) straight when lying on your side. When you lie on your back, your spine naturally forms an “S” shape. A supportive, conforming mattress allows your back muscles to relax, which improves healthy blood circulation and reduces tossing and turning. My Mom always told me the firmer, the better and for many years I slept on a mattress that felt more like the sidewalk than a bed. Thanks to those years, my chiropractor and massage therapist enjoy job security. In general, mattresses fall into three categories. Does your mattress offer you the support, conformability and firmness you need? Many people confuse firmness with support when they’re shopping for a new mattress – and conformability often never enters the conversation. To minimize pain and discomfort and help your body relax into healing, regenerative sleep, you need a mattress that conforms to your sleeping position while supporting all areas of your body – not an easy task.
So how do you find the best mattress for you? Grab your partner (if you don’t sleep alone) and start shopping. By mattress shopping, we mean lying on a lot of mattresses. Talk to lots of sales people – this is their business after all – but be prepared to test mattresses for yourself. You know how your body feels on a bad mattress, so it makes sense that you’ll also know what feels good. Try these 3 simple rules when shopping: 1. You don’t sleep sitting up so lie down on the bed 2. Lie on the bed like you do at home – side, stomach or back. 3. Compare mattresses at similar price points so you comparing fairly. What’s the true cost of a good mattress? If you spent $2,000 on a new mattress and slept comfortably on that mattress for 7 years, the cost of healthy sleep would be $1.27 per night – less than the cost of Starbucks coffee in the morning… If you’re ready for a new mattress, we’d love to help you find the right one for you. Visit our Find a Retailer page and we’ll locate a store close by where you can lie on our mattresses and talk to a trained sales professional.
The last time I bought a mattress for myself was about 11 years ago. I bought a fairly new full-sized one off a coworker. Four moves and a decade later, we’ve decided it’s time to replace it with an adult (and sometimes an extra toddler)-sized bed. When we started looking, I was shocked at the prices. $3000 for a mattress? What the heck are these things made of? Knowing very little, we went shopping for a mattress and other things on a Saturday morning. The first place, we stopped, Sleepy’s, seemed nice enough. We laid on a few and honed in on the one that we both felt most comfortable in. Meanwhile, Audrey discovered the fun of letting herself fall backwards onto mattresses and did it all over the store. She was giggling and the whole store couldn’t help but look and smile at her. Unfortunately, we soon stopped smiling. When we found something we liked, the seemingly helpful salesman started to get more aggressive. He asked how much we were looking at paying and I made up a number on the spot, something way below the listed price on the bed.
The said he would “talk with his manager” and see if he could get us that price. Then he started asking us if we could commit and have it delivered tomorrow. Anne had walked outside to give Audrey a break by that point, so I said I had to go out and talk with her about it. We talked about it for a bit, then decided we didn’t like the high-pressure sales pitch, so we got ready to leave. I had the car started up when the salesman came out and approached the car window. He then said that he had “talked to his manager” and he could give us the price we wanted AND a free “platinum package”. I said we would talk about it and let him know. We again decided this was sketchy, but to make good on my promise, I went in and gave him my phone number and left. Later that day we went to Jordan’s Furniture, generally known to be a reputable place with reasonable places. The salespeople there were nice and NOT high-pressure. Prices were generally lower, but strangely, we couldn’t find the mattress we found at Sleepy’s.
They had Sertas, but not the one we liked. Being indecisive, we left with a couple new names of ones we liked. Later, we went to Mattress Discounters. The woman there was not pushy and told us about the BBB complaints that Sleepy’s (a 700-store chain) had gotten. We decided to think some more and head home. At home, I did some research online and I found something strange – I couldn’t find much of anything on the mattresses we saw that we liked. I found some mattresses, many of the same brand, but not the same models. I later came to find out that this was completely intentional. The mattress industry is one big scam. There is no way to make an objective decision on a mattress using actual facts. Here’s a few things that the mattress industry does to get you: 1. They mark up their prices 100% to 200%!! No wonder the first guy was able to get his “manager” to give me such a steep discount. They were probably still going to make hundreds of dollars of profits on it.
2. They give the same mattresses different names in different stores or they set up exclusivity agreements by mattress line in certain stores. This makes it impossible to comparison shop because… 3. They make it really had to get actual facts about the mattresses. Stuff like coil counts, materials, overall construction are shrouded in secrecy. But that doesn’t really matter because… 4. There’s no objective measure of mattress quality. Consumer Reports won’t rate them because they can’t get the data and there’s no testing that actually says higher coil counts are better or the number of wires in the coils makes a difference in any way. You’re left to deciding how much you believe the marketing. Is a pillow top made of alpaca hair any better than one made of cotton? Your guess is as good as mine. 5. There’s very little online reviews of mattresses, probably because the model names are so fractured. The ones I did find looked more like content-free sites designed to attract referral credits.
With some more research, I found out that it was somewhat possible to compare mattresses models from different places. It turns out that they really only make one hardness variation in each line. So you can assume that a Plush Firm mattress in the “Classic” line, is the same as another Plush Firm in the Classic line, even if they have different names. was very helpful in figuring this out. We were able to understand which mattresses we saw and how they related to each other. For example, the mattress we liked at Jordan’s was a product line better than the one we saw at Mattress Discounters, even though they came out to the same price! Clearly Jordan’s had the better deal, but US-Mattress had an even better deal. So I did something I never thought I could do, buy a mattress over the internet. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one we saw in the store and the free delivery and frame were a good deal. I’m sure that even if I’m getting it at half the price I saw it listed at elsewhere, they’re still making a decent profit on it.