Back pain can have a serious impact on many aspects of your life, but by choosing the right mattress for you, you can at least help yourself to get a great night's sleep. Resting comfortably is a vital part of getting better, and will help you to tackle Lower back pain, also known as lumbago, affects around two in five people at some point in their lives. It can simply be caused by strain on the muscles and joints of the back, or it may be due to a more serious problem like a slipped disc, sciatica or injuries such as whiplash. In some cases it will go away by itself within a few days or weeks, but if it lasts for longer the pain and discomfort can begin to have a serious impact on your sleep. To understand why, take a look at the three natural curves of the spine: The cervical spine at the top curves outwards to support the head. The thoracic spine in the middle curves inwards to support the upper body. Finally, the lumbar spine at the bottom curves back outwards again to support the back.
Ideally, these three curves should be maintained at all times – when you're up and about, when you're sitting down, and for the eight hours a night you ideally spend in bed. You might find that your normal sleeping position is too uncomfortable, so try different positions. Sleeping on your side, with your knees drawn up, can help to alleviate pressure on your spine. Try using a thicker pillow than you usually have if you feel like your head isn't getting enough support. If it's more comfortable to sleep on your back, try placing a pillow underneath your knees, which will help to keep your spine correctly aligned. Sleeping on your front is not generally a good idea if you have back pain. It can flatten the natural curve of the spine, placing unwanted strain on your back muscles. It also means your neck is rotated, which can exacerbate pain between the shoulders. Although there's a perception that people with bad backs are more comfortable on firmer mattresses, in reality it depends on the individual.
A 2003 study in medical journal the Lancet suggested that a medium-firm mattress provides the best results for people with non-specific back pain, but if you find a softer mattress helps you to sleep comfortably, that's the right mattress for you. It's also a good idea to replace an old mattress that you've slept on for years, as these tend to develop sags in the spots where you sleep. Even small sags of half an inch mean your mattress isn't providing optimum support, and sags an inch deep or more mean your spine isn't being correctly supported. With that in mind, it's best to visit a mattress store and "test drive" a number of different ones for yourself. Get into your favoured sleeping position, and don't be shy of taking a good few minutes with each one to really make up your mind! You might wish to start your search with memory foam and latex mattresses. According to research by the independent sleep website Sleep Like the Dead, these are some of the best mattresses for people who live with back, hip and shoulder pain, because they give plenty of support and they're less likely to sag.
Memory foam in particular has high "conformability", meaning the mattress moulds to the specific shape of your body – that's exactly what memory foam's for, after all. This can be a particular benefit for people suffering from pain in their lower backs. Air beds aren't just for camping! It might be tempting to assume that the more you spend on a quality mattress, the more it'll do for your back pain – but in fact, some people find an inexpensive air mattress best of all. One of the greatest benefits of an air mattress is that by adjusting the level of inflation, you can increase or decrease the firmness and support it provides to your liking. It might not be a solution for everybody, but if you're finding traditional mattresses aren't doing the job, an air mattress (or alternatively a water bed) is certainly worth a try.Odd, really - I'm in a shop called Dreams, yet I'm having what can only be described as a nightmare. I'm trying to buy a new bed. So far, I've lain down on half a dozen and have already forgotten whether I preferred the Silentnight Harmony, the Dunlopillo Dickens, or the Hypnos Beethoven.
Which is bad news, really, since there are at least another 50 to go and already my back is starting to play up. Bed behaviour: Brits get only 6.6hours of sleep per night, rather than the recommended eight Yes, like 49 per cent of people in this country, I get some form of lower lumbar aggravation at least once a year and, like 99.9 per cent of people, I don't have a clue what bed would suit me best. Nor do I know how to find out. Amazing, given that we spend one-third of our lives asleep. Or not asleep, in my case. Recently, I've noticed my joints echoing the creaking sounds the bed makes each time I turn over. Plus more of my dreams seem to feature me clinging on to the edge of a cliff, upon which I wake up and find I'm trying to stop myself falling into the mattress valley that has opened up between me and my wife. According to the Sleep Council - the promotional wing of the National Bed Federation - we Brits get only 6.6hours of sleep per night, rather than the recommended eight.
Dr Chris Idzikowski, of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says that if we all treated ourselves to a new bed, we would get an extra 42 minutes' shut-eye per night. Not surprisingly, the bed industry is big on the benefits of swapping your old mattress for a new, preferably more expensive one. The Furniture Industry Research Association claims a bed can lose 70 per cent of its strength over a ten-year period, while the Sleep Council warns that, like a marriage, a bed will start deteriorating after seven years. As a result, practically every mattress on the market tries to talk us into bed with quasi-medical promises. Beds are given names like Ortho and Posturepedic, while the hardest mattresses are all classified as 'orthopaedic'. Much is made in the marketing blurb about the scientific research that has gone into the making of the mattresses. Tempur use an absorbent foam developed by Nasa scientists in order to minimise G-forces on astronauts during take-off. Not everyone, however, is convinced.
'I have often wondered what the word orthopaedic means in the context of buying a bed,' says Steve Krikler, a senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon based in Coventry. 'Most of the terminology is impressive-sounding jargon to persuade you to part with your hardearned cash, without any real evidence. A bad mattress can exacerbate back pain, but can it actually give you a bad back? I'm not sure there's any scientific evidence to back that up.' What gives you a bad back is not lying in bed - it's sudden twisting and lifting. 'It is a bit crazy', agrees the woman from the BackCare helpline. 'There used to be a school of thought that if you had a bad back, you needed a hard bed. The fact is, it depends on a person's weight, height and age.' And what kind do I need? She can't tell me. 'We only offer a listening ear,' she replies, 'not medical advice.' surprising, as there doesn't seem to be a doctor in the world who is qualified in the field of optimum sleep angles or the best bed for your
Just as no one had heard of an IT consultant 30 years ago, so the post of clinical snoozician or horizontalist has yet to be invented. There has been some medical examination of the bed-makers'In a study in the journal Spine, back-pain patients were asked to compare comfort levels of a hard mattress, a body-conforming foam mattress and a waterbed.'The waterbed and foam mattress did influence back symptoms, function and sleep more positively, as opposed to the hardBut the differences were small,' said the researchers. Which isn't much for the average mattress-purchaser to go on. It seems the closest you can get to expert advice is a Sleep Council leaflet, entitled The Bed Buyers' Guide, which tries to de-mystify the inner workings of a mattress. It explains the different type of spring configurations. are open springs, arranged in rows and connected by a thick, spiral Then there are pocket springs, housed in individual fabric
pockets, allowing them to work independently of each other. when you turn over, the spring-ripple effect stays on your side and doesn't spread to your partner. And that's not all. There are different types of foam mattress: latex (which springs back when you get up) and visco-elastic, or 'memory foam', which doesn't, but leaves an imprint of your body. But you have to be careful, warns BackCare, not to get stuck in your own moulded hollow. 'Lying in one position can create stiffness. A mattress should be supportive enough to take the weight of your body without sagging, but firm enough for you to turn with ease.' Bed Buyers' Guide has a picture of the perfect back shape when you're lying on your side. Think of the spine as a mouth and it should be neither tight-lipped, nor bendy and smiley, but more of a gentle, faraway grin. Too rigid a back will mean your body isn't relaxed. Too slouchy and you'll be sleeping with a bent spine. The trouble is, when you're lying on a bed in a retail outlet, you can't see the shape of your back.
And you don't half feel a fool asking the sales assistant: 'Is my spine smiley or sad?' The solution is to go bed-buying with someone else, preferably the person you're going to be sharing it with. Yet, instead of settling for a one-mattress-fits-both scenario, couples can have a his-and-hers arrangement, whereby you opt for two different-strength single mattresses that fit inside a zip-up double overblanket. More fool me, then, for coming to the bed shop on my own. It's just that I can't shake off memories of the time my wife and I went to John Lewis and lay there, while other shoppers stood at the foot of our bed, like they were visiting the tomb of a medieval king and queen. It seems few of us feel relaxed lying down in a department store. Jessica Alexander of the Sleep Council says: 'Eighty per cent of people spend less than two minutes trying the bed in which they're going to spend 3,000 hours every year. 'We recommend you spend at least ten minutes, ideally 30.
If you're embarrassed, listen to music with your eyes closed. Some couples even wear their pyjamas!' Instead, I ask the sales assistant if it's all right to take my shoes off, and try the mattresses at my own pace and in my own trousers. Even so, with 50-plus beds to get through, I put in barely a minute on each. Afterwards, I write down words such as 'squidgy' and discover that mattress 'ratings' (one for rock-hard, five for wobbly) are unreliable. Similarly, the number of springs in the mattress doesn't seem to have a huge bearing on how comfortable it is by any stretch of the imagination. The other thing I discover is that if my chosen mattress and I don't get on, a quickie divorce can be arranged. 'If you've got a bad back, it's worth finding a retailer who will take a mattress back,' says Jessica. After two-and-a-half hours of being supine, I have narrowed the choice down to four mattresses, costing between £399 and £919 (the most expensive is £2,899).