Hi Brick,
OK ⌠thatâs helpful as a reference.
In looking over the thread it is somewhat confusing and complex to me. While Iâm happy to make simple suggestions that have good odds of working, if simple more generic suggestions arenât successful and you are in a more complex or âlower oddsâ situation, then voice communication becomes necessary and your best odds are to work with them directly. Forum suggestions or âtheory at a distanceâ is by its very nature limited to dealing with simple solutions that are more âblack and whiteâ and providing insights into what may be happening but more than this requires requires more extended voice communication and more careful analysis that is not possible with complex written communications that canât be ânuancedâ or where the dots canât always be connected together.
While time prevents me from doing a more detailed analysis of each personâs issues ⌠I did go through this thread to see what I could gather and to see if there are any indications that can help.
If your soft Dunlop layer is 65 kg/m3 then it would probably be in the range of the high teens in terms of ILD and would be quite soft.
If your support layer is 95 kg/m3 then this would probably be in the range of the 40âs and would be very firm.
The first thing I would do is confirm this. They should be able to tell you for certain.
When you have very soft over very firm then what can happen is that you may âgo throughâ the softer layer and feel the firmness of the layer below it. This can be particularly true if your weight distribution is more concentrated in one area of your body. In the end though ⌠your own sense of what may be happening and your personal experience would be the most accurate way to know.
So here is the progression as I understand it.
On the original mattress ⌠6" firm Dunlop layer with a separate 3" soft topper:
Your wife was âmostly OKâ (not sure what if any parts werenât OK)
You were waking up with back spasms and a sore neck.
The highest odds would be to look at the pillow for the neck issues and at the firmness of the support layer for the back spasms. It could be that the combination of the softness of the comfort layers and the firmness of the support layers and the differential between them are the issue here.
There was also some question about the possibility that the two sides were different but this was not confirmed.
In the next post you also mentioned that you not only had back spasms but also lumbar back pain. For lumbar pain the first place I would look is either a mattress that is allowing your pelvis to sink in too much or not enough so that your lower back is out of alignment. This could be connected with the thickness/softness of the softer comfort layers (either allowing your pelvis to sink in too far or âstoppingâ them from sinking in enough because either way can create alignment issues. Typically this is the first but there are some indications with you that it could also be the second (support layer that is too firm).
So at this point it appears we are dealing with 3 separate but possibly connected issues. Back spasms, lower back pain, and neck pain.
You then slept on the mattress without the topper:
It appears that this made your back spasms worse but I donât know what happened with the other two symptoms (lower back and neck) but since it seemed to make the spasms worse it would indicate that you clearly need more âsoftnessâ and could be pointing to your soft layer not isolating you from the firmness of the support layer enough. This could indicate that a softer support layer with less of a transition could be helpful. It could also indicate a pillow issue because you wouldnât be sinking in as much which could change the gap between your mattress and your head and neck.
It also seems from the same post that you were using two mattress protectors. One was the 1. Protect-A-Bedâs Premium Mattress Protector and the other was the 2. Sealy mattress pad, 300TC cotton w/light padding.
These two together (especially the Sealy) would tend to make the comfort layer firmer and reduce the ability of the latex to conform to your body (you would have to âgo throughâ the padding of the mattress pad to get to the latex). The two together would do this more than one protector. The only way to know what effect these are having is to remove them and test them one at a time and use your own experience to see how they are affecting things.
When you tried the protect-a-bed by itself you could feel more of the mattress but it seems that you still had the back pain and the spasms but I donât know if these were better or worse, only that they continued at some level. The back pain would point to alignment and the upper body spasms seems to once again point to a firmness or a pillow issue.
You also mentioned in this post that you would try the wall bed but I havenât heard any results of this. If this was better for you then you could compare the layering of the wallbed with what you have and it could provide some insights.
In addition to this you also mentioned that Johnâs son indicated that he thought you may need a firmer mattress but Iâm not clear if he meant the support layers (which I understand is already as firm as they have so I donât know how you could make it firmer) or the comfort layer (which is the softest they have) and what his rationale was behind his suggestions. Perhaps your conversation with him indicated something that could be a clue.
In the next post you flipped the mattress over and slept on this with the topper:
For you this seemed to help and you had less back pain. The other side of a Dunlop core will be either softer or firmer but I donât know which one you were sleeping on. It also appears that you switched sides and your wife had back pain so there are now two variables to deal with at the same time (flipping to the other firmer/softer side of the core and also switching sides which you previously indicated may be different from yours) so I donât know how to interpret this.
The next thing you did was adding the 3" 28 ILD topper:
This at least gave you a reference point for your topper because you were clear that it was softer than the 28 ILD Talalay.
This seemed to relieve your back spasms which points to the need for a softer layer below your topper and seems to validate that you need a softer sleeping surface (or at least a little softer and a less dramatic transition between the comfort and support layer). You also indicated that this produced some arm tingling and numbness which is odd because you made the mattress softer which would usually relieve this type of symptom. This could point to other reasons for the arm tingling and numbness such as lateral alignment and sleeping in a âslouchedâ or âhunchedâ position with the softer top layers or to a pillow issue as well (the softer top layers could be allowing your midback to sink in more and forcing your head forward on your back).
For your wife this seemed to lead to a sore shoulder which is also odd to me because with the 28 ILD topper in the middle the mattress would be softer.
Shoulder issues can also be affected by your pillow.
As you can see ⌠all the many influences and changes are more complex and subtle than I can follow or âunravelâ the effect of any one of them and I havenât been able to identify from your feedback the relative effect or âdegreeâ of change in any one of them with any accuracy. There are more changing variables than I can follow on a forum in other words. The only thing that seems clear to me is that adding the 28 ILD topper in between seemed to help with the spasms and this could point to a softer support layer for you.
So my âgutâ says that you need a softer layer below the top layer (the improvement of the middle 28 ILD layer also points to this). This without the 28 ILD Talalay topper may be your closest solution.
For your wife ⌠my understanding is that she was OK with the original configuration and that none of the changes were any better for her.
So this seems to point to the split layering as being the solution with the best possible odds but again there are so many competing issues, so many simultaneous multiple changes at the same time, and so many unanswered questions about the specific âdegreeâ of of change in symptoms with a single (not multiple) change in layering (rather than just whether the symptoms were still there or not) that I canât possibly know for sure.
So I know that this may not be the most satisfying answer but I donât think a forum is the best way (or even possible) to deal with these more complex and nuanced issues. I would confirm what you have exactly so there is no speculation about what it might be, sleep on the murphy bed for a while and then compare both your symptoms and the layering to what you have, and if I had to make a guess (and thatâs all it would be) I would guess that the split layering (medium under you and firm under her) would have the best odds of being the âbase mattressâ where some further fine tuning could deal with any further symptoms that you experience with it.
Phoenix