Help with shoulder/upper back pain with new latex mattress

[phoenix]

Hi oval99,

Sometimes the pain radiates to my ribcage. Also: sometimes I will wake up with a heaviness in my limbs, making me feel as if I weigh 1,000 pounds. Don’t know what that’s about. Circulation issue? Speaking of circulation: I’ve noticed that I have more of a “blood rushing” sound in my head when I wake up (as if the bed has some effect on my blood pressure – is this even possible?).

Unfortunately there isn’t a way for me to know with any certainty the underlying cause behind any symptoms because I can’t feel what you feel on the mattress (or in your body). It would be similar to a health professional trying to diagnose a health condition based on a brief description on a forum. Having said that … post #2 here and the posts it links to has more information about the more common “symptoms” on a mattress and some of the things that may be contributing to them which may help you with the “detective work” that can be involved in assessing what may be happening and help you decide if you need firmer or softer comfort layers or firmer or softer support layers. Post #2 here also has some other suggestions that would be worth investigating.

-10" of 100% Dunlop
-The company I bought it from (The Mattress Maker in Brockton, MA) rates the firmness of their latex from C1-C5 (C5 being firmest). I currently have a 2" comfort layer of C4 with a 6" core of C3 and another 2" of C4 on the bottom. The maker of my bed said he didn’t want to put in a C4 core because it would be hard as a rock, but I was under the impression the comfort layer should be softer than the support layer.

There aren’t any rules about mattress designs that hold true for everyone and what works for one person (or even many people) may not work at all for someone else. In the end your actual results are more important than any “theory” but it’s certainly true that support cores are almost always firmer than the comfort layers of a mattress. If your mattress is using 100% natural Dunlop from Mountaintop foam you can see their firmness ratings here and I don’t think I would call their C4 “hard as a rock” when it’s used as a support layer (although it may feel very firm when it’s used as a comfort layer) and it isn’t the firmest core that they make.

-I am typically a stomach sleeper. I typically sleep with my arms cradled around the pillow. I can re-create a lot of the pain if I position myself in a typical stomach-sleeping position that I use (upper body slightly bent at a 20 degree angle with pillow cradled in my arms while on my stomach).
-My mattress before this was an 8-year-old futon that I slept on on the floor, which gave me none of these problems.

So what do you think is causing the aches? And what configuration of layers do you recommend to remedy these aches? I have a 60-day comfort guarantee and will probably use it since it’s been over 3 weeks now with no improvement. The only thing I can think of is perhaps starting with using a new, flatter pillow and seeing if that helps with the shoulder/upper back pain.

As you probably know stomach sleeping is the most risky of all the sleeping positions in terms of alignment but based on your comments it seems to me that you are on the right track and if I had to guess I would agree that the most likely cause of your “symptoms” would either be a pillow issue (raising your head and neck too much) or that you may need softer comfort layers and a firmer support core to help you with your upper body alignment and to prevent your pelvis from sagging into the mattress. It’s not uncommon at all that a softer mattress (and your mattress is probably softer than the futon you were sleeping on) may need a thinner pillow (or no pillow at all in the case of stomach sleepers) because you will sink into it more. It may also be helpful to put a thin pillow under your pelvis/lower abdomen so that the middle of your body is better aligned with your upper body and reduce the 20 degree angle to see how this affects things as well.

Phoenix