Hi jschmidt,
The forum software uses square brackets as part of the “code” it reads but the codes themselves don’t show and are invisible and they only affect the words they enclose so when you have a two pairs of square brackets with nothing in between each pair then the software doesn’t know what to do and since the words and dashes inside each pair of brackets are treated as a code it hides them. If you click edit then you can see the brackets and the “code” inside them so I changed the square brackets to regular brackets and now the his side / her side is visible.
In any case … thanks for clarifying which side you were sleeping on and the layers you were using in your combinations.
On to some comments about your layering and your “process” …
The first step in assessing a mattress and a combination of layers is to know what is most important and to let your body “speak to” your mind through the symptoms it produces so you can “learn” it’s language. The three most important parts of healthy sleeping are what I call PPP which are Posture and alignment, Pressure relief, and Personal preferences and I would prioritize them in that order. There is more about the most important factors involved in “healthy sleeping” as it relates to a mattress in post #4 here.
The most important priority is your sleeping posture and alignment. If you sleep with your spine or joints out of alignment then you may not feel that something is wrong until you have slept that way for some time and your body begins to produce “symptoms” once you have slept out of alignment for long enough. You will tend to notice these “symptoms” when you wake up after several hours of sleeping or more commonly when you wake up in the morning. What the mattress “feels like” (such as it “feels like” I am sinking in too far) is much less important than any pain or discomfort and the specific symptoms you feel and where you feel them. In other words it’s important to let your body “speak to” your mind and then use your mind to “translate” and “learn” what your body is telling you through the symptoms it produces into the types of changes that may improve your symptoms so it talks to you a little more softly (the symptoms become less noticeable or intense).
There is more about the most common symptoms that people may experience when they sleep on a mattress and the most common (although not the only) reasons for them in post #2 here.
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 clarifying the difference between “support” and “pressure relief” and “feel”.
These posts are the “tools” that can help with the analysis, trial and error, and detective work that can help you learn your body’s language and “translate” what your body is trying to tell you so you can make the changes that can reduce the symptoms you are experiencing.
After alignment the next most important priority is to relieve pressure in all your sleeping positions. Excess pressure can produce “symptoms” a little bit more quickly such as obvious pressure points or numbness or tingling in your shoulders, hops, arms, or legs… These are the symptoms to work on after you have been able to reduce or eliminate any symptoms that come from sleeping out of alignment.
The final priorities are your preferences which include temperature regulation, the freedom or restriction of movement so your body can easily change sleeping positions when it needs to over the course of the night, and all the other preferences that involve what you can “feel” when you are awake (but generally don’t feel when you are sleeping). Temperature regulation and freedom of movement are the most important preferences but alignment and pressure relief are the most important “needs” and all of these are more in the area of preferences than needs.
Overall … the most important part of assessing a mattress is how you feel when you wake up in the morning in terms of any pain or discomfort you feel and how rested and refreshed you feel mentally, physically, and emotionally.
So the first step is to find the combination of layering that provides you with good alignment so that you don’t experience lower back pain and then when you have this you can make any additional fine tuning changes that can lead to good pressure relief and your preferences about how the mattress “feels” as well.
With combination #1 you had a sore lower back which generally indicates that the support of the mattress wasn’t firm enough. The most logical first step with this would be exchanging the firm and medium layer and continuing to sleep on the soft layer on top which is what you did.
With combination #2 your only comment was that you “felt like” you were still sinking in too far but you didn’t mention any symptoms you experienced or whether your lower back pain was better or worse than combintion #1. The changes in symptoms from one combination to the next is one of the most important ways that your body “tells” you what it prefers.
With combination #3 I’m not clear about your symptoms or whether your side pain was from pressure or alignment (most likely pressure) but it appears to be pointing to comfort and transition layers that are too firm.
So out of these three it appears that the one that produced the least symptoms was combination #2 and if this is the case then you at least have a reference point for a combination that keeps you in good alignment and the only “objection” was what it “felt like” which is relatively unimportant at this stage relative to any specific symptoms it produced.
You also commented that you slept well on the Heggedal which may also be “pointing to” medium comfort layers (the comfort layer in the Heggedal is approximately equivalent to a medium Talalay) and firmer support layers (with the soft on the bottom you would likely have softer support than the springs) and could also be “pointing to” a preference for Dunlop over Talalay.
Your experience here would lead me to asking your wife if you can “borrow” her side of the mattress and sleep on it for a few days to see whether and how your “symptoms” change on the S/M/F Dunlop. If you rotate the mattress 180 degrees then you can sleep on her layers but stay on your side of the mattress so the only change is the layers you are sleeping on rather than the side you are sleeping on which can change your sleeping experience and add an additional variable that could be more difficult to “translate”.
The goal of making changes is to “learn” to translate the language of your body and what it is telling you through the specific “symptoms” it produces, the location of the symptoms, the intensity of the symptoms, and most importantly how the symptoms change with each combination you try so that it begins to “speak” more softly until you reach the point where you can’t hear it speaking at all because your symptoms are gone.
One small step at a time making smaller and more incremental changes and listening very carefully to your body’s messages about each change is the most effective pathway to success.
It may also be worthwhile talking to SleepEZ for any suggestions they may have and they will probably also give you an extension in your trial period if you ask for it if it appears you are making progress in your process and just need a little bit more time.
Once you have slept on your wife’s side for a few days if you can post your results on the forum it will be another step in “learning” what your body is telling you and then it would be time to decide on the next step of the “learning process” based on your experience over the course of the next few days,
Phoenix