I fell for the advertising two years ago and bought a queen sized original Leesa mattress. The mattress sat unused for a year, and I have now been using it consistently for a year.
Frankly, I am in agony. I am a stomach sleeper, and have been my whole life with no problem, until the Leesa. From the beginning, the mattress was too soft for me, but it was manageable. Within months of sleeping in the Leesa regularly, maybe 6, I started developing lower back pain. At some point, I noticed the pain coincided with sagging on the side of bed I usually sleep on. I switched to the other side of the bed that was significantly firmer, and also spent all of quarantine training myself to sleep on my back and my side, after a lifetime of stomach sleeping. Now, only a few months later, the second side has begun to sag, and sleeping in any position anywhere on the mattress is uncomfortable. The pain has spread from just my lower back, to include my neck and shoulders. I have been doing some reading, and apparently part of the problem might be the poor bed frame the mattress is on - a metal frame with spaced metal bars as the foundation, as opposed to one flat hard surface.
Is this sleeping situation salvageable? Should I try upgrading the mattress with a topper and improving the base, or cut my losses and buy a completely new mattress? My sleep situation is frankly somewhat urgent - I have resorted to sleeping on the floor a few nights, and that isn’t exactly pleasant either. Ultimately, I would want the mattress to be firmer, and ideally I’d be able to return to stomach sleeping, though this isn’t essential. I am very new to TMU and currently overwhelmed with the amount of information on here, but working through it slowly Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Sorry to hear about your agonizing lower back pain when sleeping on the Leesa. That does call for “somewhat urgent” solutions. You seem to be interpreting well your body’s signs and signals and your observations are correct regarding your stomach sleeping position and the pains you are experiencing. You may wish to review the guidelines in this Sleeping Positions Article so that you avoid hyperextension in a swayback position that can be the cause of your back issues. A soft mattress that is breaking down allows you to sink too much in a swayback position especially when sleeping prone.
I would certainly check to make sure that your support system is still perfectly flat and that there are no parts that are sagging or that are bending under the weight of the mattress and the people sleeping on it. It should provide similar support to having your mattress on the floor and you can test this by putting your mattress on the floor to see if it makes any difference. If it does then it’s possible that your support system could be part of the problem as well.
Adding a firmer topper won’t fix deep support. Support comes primarily from the deeper layers of a mattress (combined with the thickness/thinness of the upper layers) and not nearly as much from the firmness of the topper. This is also why it’s not really possible (except to a limited or temporary extent) to improve the deep support of a mattress where the upper layers are too thick and soft (or have softened or degraded) or the support layers are too soft by adding a firmer topper because the real solution would be removing or replacing some of the foam which has softened or broken down with thinner upper layers (not adding thickness with a topper) or replacing softer support layers with firmer ones (which can’t be changed with a topper). The firm topper will simply bend into and probably further flatten. This is the whole downside with adding toppers to old mattresses - they can often just be band-aids that cover the main issue for a while, but really don’t heal the wound.
If you have a chance us know which way you decided to go. Best of luck!
Phoenix
Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!