This may take a bit, but I’ll try to summarize the best I can while still relating details.
I’m 6’7" and weigh about 225 pounds and fairly well-proportioned - not fat or excessively skinny. Because I’m so tall, I have to sleep from corner-to-corner on my bed, curl up, or have my feet hanging over the end of the bed. I sleep on my grandparent’s bedroom set, dating from the early 1900s and am going to continue to do so. I primarily sleep on my side, but infrequently will sleep on my back as well. Unfortunately, I sleep alone. 
Honestly, I don’t think I’m overweight or do anything to damage a mattress, but am starting to wonder because of my recent experiences.
My original full-size mattress was very old and developed a hole/broken spring in the exact center. This made for very uncomfortable sleeping as you can imagine. I inherited my parents old mattress when they bought a new one - while being well over 20 years old, it was still a big upgrade from my old one. After a few years, a spring broke and a hole formed in the same place as the other, probably because that spot is right where my hips are no matter which direction the bed is rotated or flipped.
Three years ago, I bought myself a brand new mattress, after much searching deciding on the Doctor’s Choice Plush at Denver Mattress. It felt better than any others I tried, even those costing three times as much. Bought a queen size and used my woodworking skills to adapt my heirloom headboard/footboard to the larger mattress. (Yes, there were metal frames available to do this same thing, but mine is about $150 less and MUCH sturdier/better supported; I can provide pics if you want.) I still have to sleep on an angle as there’s a whole inch to split between my height and the length of the mattress and I’m not comfortable having my head that close to the headboard, but it’s considerably better than the full. It’s very nice being able to stretch out in bed, even though I’m angled.
I’ve never slept so good in my life! :cheer: 
Never realized how much pain I was in on a constant basis until it was removed. This went on until I got the flu - it went into my chest and I had to sleep sitting up propped up on a pile of pillows for about 2 months. (Anytime I laid down, I’d start coughing extremely violently, so much so that I thought I was going to damage something in my lungs. :sick: ) After I finally got better, I noticed that I tended to roll toward the middle of the bed and my lower back was hurting in the morning. :unsure: Using the string method with a set of digital calipers, I measured a sag of about 1 5/8" in the middle of the mattress and a lesser amount at different areas. At the corner where I put my shoes on each morning, there’s support directly to the floor and there was quite a bit of sag, the entire corner being angled so that you feel like you’re going to slide off.
After putting up with this for quite a while and finally went back to Denver Mattress. The woman I bought it from said that it wasn’t likely a sag but more likely ‘nesting’. She was very helpful, nice, and offered to replace it under warranty, suggesting that the firm model of the same mattress as an alternative being less prone to nesting. She said that the plush and firm are actually the same mattress with the same padding, the firm simply being stitched tighter on the surface than the plush. This is exactly what I did.
All I can say is that as good as I slept on the plush, it was that bad on the firm; it’s like sleeping on a brick it’s so hard. :S I bought a 1.5" memory foam topper as a way to hopefully soften it up - this helped, but my shoulders and hips in particular ache excessively every single morning. (The toppers were on sale any size for the same price, so I bought a king, laid it on the bed, and cut off the excess with a pair of scissors; used a small part of it to make a headrest pad for my car. This extra foam is used later, so stay tuned. 
) Figuring I’d eventually get used to it, I also put a bunch of spare blankets and a couple extra comforters under the mattress protector for added cushioning. Still felt way too hard - I wake up every 45-60 minutes and have to move because my body hurts so much where it contacts the mattress (shoulder against the bed is not infrequently completely numb when waking up), it’s hot with so much stuff on it, and I’m sore for most of every day, but again assumed I’d get used to the mattress.
After several months of this, I noticed a rather familiar ache in my lower back. :huh: Not really wanting to for fear of what I was going to find, I stripped off all the padding and used the string from side-to-side on the bare bed. Sure enough, there’s just over an inch of sag in the same exact spot as the Plush! :ohmy: Having one of those ‘ah-ha’ moments, I took the leftover strip of memory foam mentioned above and put it down the middle in the area that’s sagging, then covered it with the blankets, comforters, and full-sized memory foam topper. This has worked after a fashion - my back still hurts, though not nearly as much, but my entire body still hurts after being in bed for only a short time.
A light bub went off and I tested something else. Before putting all the padding & toppers back on, again using the string, I put half a case of paper on the bed and measured the relative deflection at various locations. Not only is there a permanent sag/nesting/body impression, the mattress sinks more at some spots than at others under the same weight disbursed over the same area. I first noticed this when putting my shoes on one day - sitting down on the corner (where I normally do) felt like I was farther down into the mattress more than if I sit down a couple feet over.
Thinking that it may be something in my body changing as I am getting older (my mother suffers from severe arthritis), I tried sleeping on the couch. My sofa is definitely not what you’d call ‘sleep-friendly’ as the two end seats recline and have footrests; lay on it and you can feel the hard ridges between the cushions. Regardless, my body didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would sleeping on the couch and was certainly nowhere near as bad as I normally feel after spending the night in bed. One night is hardly a pattern, but by this and it all started the very night I got the firm mattress, I have to believe that the bed is at least the primary culprit of the pain I’m experiencing. :dry:
I believe I have two types of pain. First is the all-over aches that wake me up at night and cause lingering soreness throughout the day. It’s my belief that this is being caused by the mattress being way too hard. The other type is in my lower back and seems to be directly related to the sag in the mattress. Even though the present mattress feels like I’m sleeping on a park bench because it’s so hard, my lower back wasn’t hurting until the sag appeared.
The sag isn’t yet at the 1.5" threshold required by the warranty, though I’m sure it won’t be long given that I’ve been sleeping on it for about 7 months now. (Haven’t had a good night’s sleep in that time. ) Not knowing what to expect, I went back to the store. To my surprise, she offered to either swap it out for another mattress or give me a partial refund. Denver Mattress certainly has fantastic customer service! :cheer: She genuinely seemed more interested in solving my problem than anything else. Unfortunately, I have lost faith in the durability of this entire style of mattress (innerspring). They’re currently re-doing their latex mattress line-up and had none in stock.
So now this is where we finally come to the present. I spent all of last weekend driving around to every mattress store in my area and got pumped full of conflicting and nonsensical BS at most of them. I’ve watched many ‘educational’ videos of varying quality and have read an insane amount over the past couple months. Here are my thoughts:
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I think they make things as difficult as possible on purpose.
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I hate sales people.
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It’s my distinct impression that they build mattresses specifically not to last so people have to go through this crap every few years.
After spending more effort on research for this than I did for any single semester during my entire 6-year college career, I’m leaning toward an all-natural latex mattress for the durability, reputed comfort, and lack of noxious chemicals in all-natural/organic latex mattresses. (One series of videos in particular was quite convincing, even presenting government reports and independent major news stories that your body absorbs low levels of toxic chemicals, arsenic among them, from the fire retardants added to most mattresses.) All of the pure memory-foam mattresses I’ve laid on make my back scream after only a few minutes, plus I do not like the feel and seriously question the durability based on what I’ve read.
The biggest problem with an all-latex mattress is that the nearest store I’ve found that has them is nearly 3 hours away, so trying them isn’t really much of an option. The closest is a Stearns & Foster Italian Villa Garden, of which only the display model is left; it feels good short-term, but there’s a good amount of non-latex foam in it and the sales people won’t leave me alone to lay on it for more than 4-6 minutes. (This last point makes me want to buy it even less than being slowly poisoned by arsenic… ) Obviously, I can buy them online, but then don’t know what the feel of the different densities and types are like or if it’ll work well for me.
There’s also the option of having the constructed bed or layered bed that you can move layers around or change them independently. I can see positive points to each design.
At this point, I just need to get some decent sleep as I don’t know how much longer I can do this… I stay up very late every night because I dread going to bed and wake up after 4 or 5 hours too sore to sleep anymore; both sides are too sore to lay on. I don’t have a ton of money to spend, but am willing to do so if needed as long as it’ll last and be comfortable. Read many stories of latex beds lasting 30+ years, but don’t know if this is the norm or the exception. All the pros/cons lists I’ve seen list durability as a plus of all-latex mattresses.
To be honest, if I could get a bed that feels like the Doctor’s Choice Plush when it’s new that would STAY feeling like that, I’d love it. However, I don’t know what firmness of what kind of latex would replicate this type of feel or what ILD factor to look for. I don’t know whether the dunlop or talalay latex would be better, though I’ve read that natural is better than synthetic or blended as far as durability and lack of chemicals goes. A couple sources indicate that blends are better than natural, but there are more that have natural being better.
Right now, I’m not even sure if I’m looking in the right direction and would appreciate any advice.