I’ve been going through different mattresses for about the past 7 years now straight and I can’t seem to find a good night’s sleep on anything. I’ve tried Temperpedic all memory foam ones, I’ve tried part memory foam part spring ones, I’ve tried firm and soft and nothing has given me a good nights sleep. Almost all of my mattresses have been Sleepy’s bought.
Recently I was traveling for 4 months (almost all at hotels) and I found I could actually get a really good nights sleep on spring mattresses and other cheap, old type mattresses. In particular while in Bali I slept on a spring bed that I had 3 AMAZING nights sleep on (called Bigland beds, Spring bed) but they only seem to make this in some bootleg factory in Asia. I live in the US. The company is unreachable.
I currently wake up with pain and cramps in my right shoulder, right ankle and sometimes my back as well. It is really bad. I am a side and back sleeper.
Any and all suggestions and recommendations would be greatly appreciated : )
I would suggest starting with post #1 here which is the most important post on the forum and will give you all the basic information, steps, and guidelines you will need to make good choices
Once you get to step 3 … if you let me know your city or zip I’d be happy to let you know of any of the better options I’m aware of in your area.
I would prefer to answer all questions on the forum. I receive many private requests for help each day and and unfortunately I only have the time to reply to PM’s and emails that need a quick reply and which for some reason aren’t suitable or appropriate for the forum (such as log in issues for example).
In almost all cases my reply to private requests for help through PM’s or emails are answered with a “standard” reply which is all I am able to do (and even then it sometimes takes me a few days to get to them) …
[quote]Hi …,
I’d certainly love to help but it would help me a lot if you could post your questions on the forum. That way it can also help others with similar questions or in the same area and helps make the forum a more useful resource. It also of course saves me from having to answer similar questions many times on an individual or private basis and with the forum growing, my ongoing research and conversations with various outlets and manufacturers, and other tasks that are important to the ongoing development of the site taking up most of my remaining hours (besides sleeping), I am not able to provide any private consulting or replies to requests for help outside of the forum (unless of course a question is not appropriate for the forum).
Thanks for your understanding and I’m looking forward to helping in any way I can on the forum.
Ok, pardon me. When you said “if you let me know your city or zip I’d be happy to let you know of any of the better options I’m aware of in your area.”
I assumed you meant over a PM. I would rather the whole world not know what city and zip code I am in. I prefer a little discretion.
But since you prefer to talk over an open forum, np. I live in NYC, my zip code is 11249.
[quote=“Phoenix” post=19627]Hi AlexZ,
I would prefer to answer all questions on the forum. I receive many private requests for help each day and and unfortunately I only have the time to reply to PM’s and emails that need a quick reply and which for some reason aren’t suitable or appropriate for the forum (such as log in issues for example).
In almost all cases my reply to private requests for help through PM’s or emails are answered with a “standard” reply which is all I am able to do (and even then it sometimes takes me a few days to get to them) …
[quote]Hi …,
I’d certainly love to help but it would help me a lot if you could post your questions on the forum. That way it can also help others with similar questions or in the same area and helps make the forum a more useful resource. It also of course saves me from having to answer similar questions many times on an individual or private basis and with the forum growing, my ongoing research and conversations with various outlets and manufacturers, and other tasks that are important to the ongoing development of the site taking up most of my remaining hours (besides sleeping), I am not able to provide any private consulting or replies to requests for help outside of the forum (unless of course a question is not appropriate for the forum).
Thanks for your understanding and I’m looking forward to helping in any way I can on the forum.
I’ve never considered a city or zip code as being connected to discretion or information that would compromise the anonymity or privacy of a forum member though.
In any case … the better options I’m aware of in the New York city area are in post #2 here and there is a more categorized list with more detailed descriptions of some of them in post #7 here.
Alex, first I was reading your post, and I was thinking, "is this guy sure he’s not just an insomniac and needs to treat that?
But this bit I’ve quoted seems like what you’re really complaining about. It’s not that you can’t sleep, it’s that when you wake up you have pain?
Do you guys with all these pain issues when you wake up… Do you guys ever see a chiropractor about all this stuff?
I have no intent of being judgemental, lord knows I have my own sleeping issues, they are just different than yours. But I’m a heavy side sleeper who actually prefers a firm mattress… it’s hard for me to imagine having to deal with those pain issues.
When I went to a chirpractor, after the doctor adjusts your spine by popping it, he lays you on a bench and puts some mat on your back that uses heat and electrically stimulus to massage your back. If I had that many pain issues, I’d look into buying one of those thing.
I think you are bringing up a very good point. Sometimes it’s interesting to me how several posters at the same time touch on similar topics and my last reply in post #68 here just before this one would be appropriate here as well.
Quality of sleep and any “symptoms” that people experience either when they go to bed, during the night, or when they wake up in the morning can have many causes and only one of these is the mattress we sleep on.
Of course a mattress can have a significant effect on how we sleep and making sure that the one we choose provides good sleeping posture, pressure relief, microclimate control (temperature, humidity, and ventilation next to the body), and the ability to both change positions easily and to isolate movement from a sleeping partner can all be important to different degrees for different people but as you touched on there are many other elements to sleep quality and sleeping “symptoms” that have nothing to do with a mattress and there can sometimes be a tendency to think of a mattress as a “cure all” for sleeping issues which if course it isn’t.
It can be tricky to isolate the root cause of some symptoms because it can be easy to make incorrect assumptions about where they may be coming from but as you mentioned it is well worth exploring other alternatives to any sleep issues besides just the sleeping surface that we use.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and touching on one of the other parts of sleep quality that can be just as important as a mattress that we choose.
Might be true in some people’s cases. In my case, I’ve noticed over the course of many years that waking up throughout the night and the pain and cramps happen from sleeping on certain kinds of mattresses. When Ive slept on spring mattresses while traveling, I have had no pain or cramps at all. There was a direct correlation.
Thanks so much for the links. What I am looking for is a bit different though.
As opposed to just throwing money (which I dont have, lol) at the problem (as I’ve done over the past 7 years (I’ve been through 5 mattresses at least in that time)) and buying a new mattress and hoping it works for me what I’m looking for is this: local resources that could help me come to a reasonably accurate answer as to what type of a bed fits my body right so that I can have a comfortable nights sleep and not wake up in pain. I.e. sleep doctors, or sleep clinics (I’ve heard there are places that people go for Insomnia and apnia where you actually sleep in the clinic and then observe you sleeping, etc).
Anywhere that could help me understand what might work for me before I go and spend a bunch of money again.
Last thought and its an important one. I recently had 3 great nights of sleep on a sofa made of 6 inches of high density foam sitting on top of coil springs (in the base of the couch). Phoenix are there any mattresses that you know of that fit that description?
Again thank you all so much for all your help. This is something that has been seriously screwing up my life so I really appreciate the help and advice.
Much of the feel and performance of this would be the foam in the couch which is typically 1.8 lb density or higher and on the firmer side because of the need to resist the more concentrated weight of a sitting position.
While I don’t know the firmness level of the foam in your couch … you could probably approximate this with a mattress that used about 6" of good quality polyfoam (the higher the density the more durable it will be) and then either put this on a firm foundation or if you needed a little more flex underneath this then a semiflex foundation or even a box spring depending on how much flex there was in the couch springs or how much “give” you needed under the mattress.
Dixie Foam makes a mattress very much like this (6" of very high quality firmer polyfoam) in either firm or medium firm.
Much of the feel and performance of this would be the foam in the couch which is typically 1.8 lb density or higher and on the firmer side because of the need to resist the more concentrated weight of a sitting position.
While I don’t know the firmness level of the foam in your couch … you could probably approximate this with a mattress that used about 6" of good quality polyfoam (the higher the density the more durable it will be) and then either put this on a firm foundation or if you needed a little more flex underneath this then a semiflex foundation or even a box spring depending on how much flex there was in the couch springs or how much “give” you needed under the mattress.
Dixie Foam makes a mattress very much like this (6" of very high quality firmer polyfoam) in either firm or medium firm.
The Dreambed Deluxe is the one I meant. It has 5.5" of very good quality polyfoam whch would be much better quality than the polyfoam in your couch. The Dreambed would probably also be slightly higher quality than the foam in your couch but not as good quality as the Deluxe.
The Cloudrest has an additional 3" layer of latex on top of the same polyfoam and may be well worth considering as well although it wouldn’t be the same as your couch.
