Wake up because your sleep thief may be lurking under your covers – your mattress. You spend a lot of time in bed and how well and how long you sleep affects everything in your life. The trouble is, most of us don’t equate our sleep health with our overall health and when we do connect the dots, buying a new mattress is a big, expensive deal – and it’s not something you can afford to make a mistake on. For most people, comfort is the decision maker but support, durability and health issues are equally important. It’s time to go mattress shopping if you answer yes to any of the following questions: “Finding the right mattress isn’t about searching out the highest-tech brand or spending the most money,” writes Stephanie Watson on WebMD. “Instead of focusing on price and brand name, think about what you want in a mattress.” If it’s been a while since you bought a new mattress, read through our top 3 tips and learn how to test drive a good night’s sleep before you buy.
To truly know if a mattress is right for you, lie down on it. One manufacturer’s firm is another’s medium/firm – or extra/firm. Pick a focus point – your shoulder, lower back or your hips – and gauge how the mattress feels at that spot. And then lie on it like you lie on your mattress at home. A side sleeper needs extra cushioning in the hip and shoulder, but a back sleeper may need additional lumbar support. There’s no magic mattress that’s best for everyone, but visiting a mattress retailer will help you feel your way to a better night’s sleep. Hint: If you share your bed with a partner, test mattresses together and discuss what feels good and why. My mother told me the best way to protect my spine was to sleep on a mattress that resembled a butcher’s block. A firm mattress is not necessarily a supportive mattress though. A medium to firm mattresses will likely buffer pressure points better, which allows your muscles to relax and aligns your spine naturally.
Your spine is curved naturally and supporting those curves will rejuvenate and revitalize you. Hint: Ask the sales person lots of questions and be honest about pain issues you’re currently experiencing. The more information you provide, the quicker you’ll find the right mattress for you. How long do you expect your mattress to support you? Like all products, your mattress will gradually (over time) lose the ability to buffer pressure points and support your spine properly – that’s natural wear and tear. The Better Sleep Council recommends buying a new mattress every 5-7 years and offers a handy mattress shopping tip sheet. Remember, a mattress warranty protects against defects in workmanship and materials, which age a mattress faster and must be addressed by the store that sold you the mattress. If you’re not a warranty/receipt keeper, it’s time to start. Hint: Read mattress reviews online – but maintain perspective. Some review sites are filled with competitors bashing each other, which isn’t helpful to consumers.
Visit their social media sites and ask members of their communities for first-hand advice.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. Use these links to begin your online research: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.