My wife and I purchased an all natural latex mattress last February, and are now shopping for a new mattress. The bed has 3 layers of foam(individual sides) and a plush 4" separate topper. By far and away it was the best sleep we had ever enjoyed. That lasted about 4 to 5 months. I then noticed my lower back starting to have some stiffness. My back ended up hurting so bad, I had to go to special trigger point massage therapy. that helped a little bit. I started doing all kinds of stretches for my back prescribed for me by my regular doctor. I finaly told my wife I was going to sleep on our $40 camping air mattress. After about a week, all my back pain was gone. I dont know what it is about the latex, but it makes my back hurt. I feel like maybe the support is not there, but I take the topper off to sleep on the bottom 3 layers which consist of, X firm, X firm, and firm. This is slightly better, but my back still hurts. The only answer I can come up with is, my body is trying to resist the constant pressure the latex is pushing against my body. I know it sounds strange, but I can not come up with anything else. I have tried 3 or 4 different times to go back to the latex, but after only a night or two, my back hurts. So here I am after sleeping on a $40 camper air mattress for the past 6 months, thinking about some kind of sleep number bed. Does anyone have any thoughts on the air beds. Thanks, Marc
Hi msd4141,
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences and that your mattress isn’t working well for you.
I looked back on your previous posts and I couldn’t find any information about your body type or sleeping style and positions so it’s not really possible to make many meaningful comments but it sounds to me like the layering arrangement you have may not be ideal for you. You probably won’t need a whole new mattress because one of the advantages of having a component mattress is that you have many options to change the individual layers (either with different firmness levels of latex or with a different material) without having to replace the entire mattress and it would make a lot of sense to explore whether this would be a good solution for you before starting all over again with a new mattress. It’s very possible that the topper you have is too soft and that sleeping directly on the X firm, X firm, firm may be too firm and that something in the middle may work much better for you.
When you are sleeping on a mattress all the opposing forces of your body pushing down and the mattress “pushing back” are in equilibrium and there is no “direction” to the pressure you experience … there is only the pressure that you experience along the surface area of your body. If you sleep on the floor for example it doesn’t “push back” (it has no resilience) but you will still experience pressure points. The key is to equalize the pressure along the surface of your body in all your sleeping positions and a different layering arrangement may accomplish this for you.
There is also more in post #2 here about the most common symptoms that people may experience on a mattress and some of the most common causes for them that may help you identify the reasons for your experiences but the most common cause of lower back pain is an alignment issue.
There is also more about primary or “deep” support and secondary or “surface” support and their relationship to firmness and pressure relief and the “roles” of different layers in a mattress in post #2 here and in post #4 here that may also be helpful in deciding on the types of firmness changes in either the support, comfort, or transition layers that may be helpful.
Have you talked with Shawn at SleepEZ? I know they will certainly be happy to provide you with some guidance and suggestions as well.
You can see my thoughts about them in this article.
Phoenix