This post is by staff writer April Dykman. I’ve dropped a rather obscene amount of money on bodywork in the last few years. I’ve had an evolving team of chiropractors, massage therapists, and acupuncturists. I’ve bought books on physical therapy exercises. Some things have worked, others have not. In the end, the pain always comes back. I have chronic shoulder pain. My arms also frequently go numb in the middle of the night. I don’t mean they tingle, I mean sometimes I literally cannot move my arm. I have to use my functioning hand to reposition it and get blood flowing back into the limb. When my shoulder bothers me enough, I usually get a massage to alleviate the pain. It’s a temporary fix — I know a 60-minute massage can’t cure a chronic problem that’s probably caused by structure and daily habits. But recently a new (to me) massage therapist asked me two questions that no one else had asked. First, she asked if I grind my teeth at night. Yes, I have in the past, and I have a TMJ (temporomandibular joint) disorder.
She firmly suggested that I started wearing my night guard consistently, and in the past five days the pain has gone from a constant ache to a mild annoyance. The second question she asked: “How old is your mattress?” So old, I didn’t want to tell her. The mattress my husband and I sleep on for (ideally) eight hours every night is 11 years old. I know it’s not in good shape. I just never thought it would make that much of a difference, but then, I never would have guessed that a night guard would, either. “You should think about replacing it,” she said. “Even a cheap new mattress is better than a worn-out one. One of my clients bought a $600 mattress from Costco and her back pain went away.” I know you’re probably thinking that a new mattress should have been an obvious solution. But after so many years of varying diagnoses, x-rays showing scoliosis (one chiropractor called it “severe,” another disagreed) and other spinal issues, I thought the pain was a given, something I’d have to learn to manage.
I also didn’t realize just how old our mattress was. I started my mattress search in my usual way, by reading mattress-buying guides like the one J.D. wrote a few years ago. (Interesting tip: According to Consumer Reports, you’ll know in 15 minutes if a mattress will be comfortable: “Panelists who took beds home for a month-long trial rarely changed the opinion they formed after the first night. On the whole, their opinions were the same as those of our in-store testers.”) But I also had some other concerns, such as off-gassing. Most mattresses and box springs are coated in a mixture of fire-retardant chemicals, formaldehyde, glues, stains, and coatings, all of which release gasses into the air. There are a lot of parenting sites that recommend organic mattresses for baby’s crib, but the hard, scientific data is nonexistent or vague in most of those articles. Here’s what I was able to find: For a more in-depth look at PBDEs, this Slate article outlines the studies and recent developments.
I’m still not sure how much of a difference a mattress makes — is the amount of toxic gas negligible compared to, say, your laptop or carpeting? If that study exists, I couldn’t find it. In the end, you have to weigh the studies with the unknowns and decide if paying extra for an organic mattress is right for you. (Also note that if your mattress is a few years old, it’s possible that it’s finished off-gassing.) My husband and I decided to go with organic, and we made some adjustments to the budget to cover it. After all, I’d spent much more during the past few years on chiropractic appointments — even an organic mattress looked downright cheap in comparison! Shopping for a mattress We’ve covered mattress shopping at GRS here and here, and those two articles have great advice for getting a good deal on a comfortable mattress. But if you’re interested in an organic mattress, the following are a few extra pointers to keep in mind: We opted to buy our mattress from a Texas manufacturer.
I found some great deals for organic mattresses online, but I liked that this was a local, 20-year-old business that had great reviews from customers. If we aren’t happy with our mattress, they’ll take it back and customize it based on our feedback, at no additional cost. “We’re in it together,” said the owner, who sold us the mattress. Additionally, if I get a note from a doctor about my back issues, the mattress store will refund us the sales tax we paid. Next Thursday our new mattress will be delivered, and the old one will go to that big mattress store in the sky. I won’t be able to tell you with any certainty whether organic was worth the extra expense or not, but I have a feeling I’m going to owe that massage therapist a fruit basket or something. This article is about House & Home Health & Fitness House and HomeThe 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. Anne and I agree that buying a mattress is worse than buying a car. While both have sketchy salespeople, when you buy a car, you can compare them on MPG, size, features, etc. Multiple dealers have the same models so you can compare prices and make an informed decision based on their invoice prices.