Your Mattress Influences on your sleep
According to the article “Can a Mattress Really Impact Your Sleep?” we have come to the conclusion that a mattress can really impact your
sleep. Although there
isn't specific scientific evidence to prove that one type of mattress will help
you sleep better than another, some mattresses will make your body rest better
than others.
Sleepless nights,
tossing, turning and exhausted mornings -- we all have experienced that. But
did you know that sleeping on the right mattress can help alleviate these problems
and remind you what it feels like to be rested? We now know that mattresses
really do matter when it comes to getting a good night's sleep!
According to a
study by Research Triangle International and Drs. Andy Krystal and Jack Edinger
from Duke University, you may not have to be a princess to feel the pea under
your mattress. Their four-year study looked at how different support levels of
mattresses impacted sleep, pain and daytime functioning. More than 16,000
nights of sleep were evaluated on 128 subjects, making this one of the largest
studies ever completed on normal pain-free sleepers and how mattresses impact
their health.
Previous
Studies Stumble
Very few
studies have looked at the effect mattresses have on sleep and pain, and the
ones that have been done only looked at small numbers of people or small
numbers of mattresses. The small sample sizes often led to the conclusion that
"medium-firm" mattresses are the best for sleep. The error in this
conclusion is two-fold. First, there is no recognized definition for what a
"medium-firm" mattress would feel like. A 250-pound person may
describe a mattress as soft while a 125-pound person may describe the same
mattress as firm. Second, there were people in the study that slept well on
other mattresses. Should they sleep on medium-firm mattresses even though they
slept better on a softer or firmer mattress?
Other studies
have come to the conclusion that mattresses have no impact on sleep. These
studies have typically used small numbers of subjects or have used university
students. The use of university students is a poor choice, since this group is
often very sleep-deprived. These students, given an opportunity, can sleep just
about anywhere -- laying on the floor or sitting in the classroom!
Mattresses
Matter
The study by
Krystal and Edinger overcame the shortcomings of previous studies by examining
a large number of people (128), a large variety of different firmness of
mattresses (seven), and a large number of nights on each mattress (four weeks).
After evaluating more than 16,000 nights of sleep it was clear that even small
differences in mattress support (soft, medium, firm) correlated with changes in
sleep and pain. This is a clear indication that mattresses really do matter.
However, the study had a second powerful conclusion: We may not be able to
determine which mattresses are best for us when we are awake.
Attention
Shoppers!
The fact that
people are very poor at selecting which mattresses would allow them to sleep
pain-free should immediately interest consumers in the midst of mattress
shopping. What's the reason for this phenomenon? The answer lies in what
happens to our body while sleeping. We pass through different stages of sleep
each night. One of those stages called "rapid eye movement" (REM) is
the stage of sleep when our most vivid dreams take place. To prevent us from
acting out our dreams, we lose skeletal muscle tone. The skeletal muscles that
support our back relax and we lose spinal support. So, a mattress that felt
supportive while you were awake with the muscles active may perform differently
when you are in REM sleep.
It would
appear that we can all be a princess (or prince) when we sleep, meaning we
really can feel those mattress differences, especially when we're catching some
“Zzzs”.
Reference:
- Huffpost Healthy Living
Huffpost
Healthy Living. Dr. Robert Oexman. 10/14/2012
Can a Mattress Really Impact Your Sleep?