Hi there. I am desperately looking for advice on a latex mattress topper. I recently purchased a Plush Beds Botanical Bliss 10" talalay mattress in medium-firm (29-31 ILD). I am 5’9" and 140 pounds with most of my weight in the lower region. In fact, I have a very slim upper body and shoulder area. I love the Plush Beds mattress; however, I am starting to experience some pretty severe shoulder pain. I am a side sleeper and I am wondering if my mattress is too firm and if I need a soft topper. I have done some research and was considering the Ultimate Dreams 3" topper in soft (19 ILD). I would love you thoughts/suggestions.
i hate when manufacturers and sellers confuse the matters by providing meaningless and wrong information but they do it all the time though. i went to the site and checked it out - sure enough they express mattress firmness as ILD …
exept that ILD cannot be used to measure anything except a 4" thick layer of foam. it cannot be used to measure mattress firmness, so they ( excuse my french ) basically pull those numbers out of their ass. this pulling ILD numbers out of their ass problem is actually endemic in this industry.
in other words based on information they provide i can’t tell what is the ILD of the uppermost layer of the mattress, and therefore how what you buy would relate to it ( softer or firmer ).
that said i have a 2" 19 ILD topper from brooklynbedding.com ( same company that sells ultimate dreams on Amazon ) and it is rather ridiculously soft - so soft its useless IMO. so i’m pretty sure it would soften up whatever you have.
that said brooklyn bedding / dreamfoam doesn’t use 100% natural latex - they use blended latex. most people ( me included ) don’t care much, but if you already have a 100% natural mattress that cost over $2G might want to consider spending a bit extra for a 100% natural latex topper.
also i have to warn you that the cover on brooklyn bedding topper is not removable and of questionable quality … but the whole topper costs less than you would have to pay for the latex itself ( without the cover ) elsewhere, so you can just rip the cover off and throw it in the trash, then buy a better one.
finally if you have shoulder pain ( as i do ) you probably shouldn’t sleep on your side to begin with. that’s a bit like banging your head on the wall then complaining about headache. shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body, and i actually know somebody who dislocated his shoulder in his sleep. you can actually injure your shoulder simply putting your coat on - think of what sleeping on it for 8 hours will do.
i’m not saying you shouldn’t try the topper - i’m saying you have to be reaslistic. as we get older our joints get weaker. the shoulder is not designed for sleeping on. for those people who can get away with doing that - good for them. i can’t. i actually sleep in fear that i might accidentally end up on my shoulder and hurt it … and i was shoulder pressing 300 pounds ~ 8 years ago.
actually the shoulder is not so much a joint as it is simply a bunch of loose ligaments and tendons. this design was necessary to enable the kind of flexibility that you need to lets say throw a baseball or a spear - but the price for this flexibility is fragility.
with the bed i have now i can sleep on my back. with the mattress i am building i hope to be able to sleep on my stomach. i don’t think i could get a mattress on which i could sleep on my side even if i had $50,000 to spend on it.
Hi mom2meredeth,
A medium firm comfort layer in the range of 29 - 31 ILD would be on the firm side for most people of your body type so I can understand that you are having some shoulder pain.
The risk of adding a topper is that the softer and thicker it is … the further away from the support layers you will be and this can increase the risk of exchanging a pressure relief issue for an alignment issue (your pelvic girdle could sink down too far and tilt causing your spine to be out of its natural alignment). Because of this … it’s usually best to use a topper that is “just enough” in terms of thickness and softness so that the risk to your alignment is minimized.
While only your own personal experience on a mattress/topper combination can know for certain how well it works … there are some topper guidelines in post #2 here (and the posts it links to) that may be helpful in choosing the best thickness and softness.
I would probably lean more towards 2" just to reduce the alignment risk
Phoenix
are you saing that 29-31 is the ILD of the top layer of her mattress ?
Thanks so much for all the info. I think I would definitely like to stay with 100% talalay latex. What would be my options for a relatively soft, 2" topper?
Hi mom2meredith,
If you are asking this of g1981c I would be very cautious of the accuracy of any reply you receive. I transfer most of his posts to this thread (including his reply to you in your thread) so that they don’t end up misleading people due to his inexperience and lack of knowledge about mattress materials, theory, construction, and design.
Phoenix
Actually, I was asking you! I could tell from reading prior posts, that you are the one with the knowledge! 
Imagination is more important than knowledge ~ Albert Einstein …
besides, they did studies and people who listen to “experts” on TV were more likely to answer questions about world events wrong than people who were not following the news at all …
in other words it doesn’t matter how much you know - that doesn’t make you right
i dare you to point to an example in history where censorship has been used to advanced knowledge and truth …
nobody questions the research you have done - but no amount of research can make any single person the final authority on anything. they already tried this model in ancient China but eventually they were forced to realize it doesn’t work when the British Empire showed them what’s what.
because progress is impossible when knowledge is considered to be final.