New Dunlop Latex Mattress Upper Back Pain male 5 11 154 pounds Side Sleeper

I just recently got a new latex mattress and after my first days sleeping on it I have been waking up every morning with upper back pain. When I hunch forward my whole upper back is pretty tight. I have 30 days to return the mattress if I want to but wanted to post some pictures of my posture in the bed to see if it looks correct. The mattress is 6 inches of medium firmness dunlop latex with a 3 inch medium soft dunlop topper. I am not able to swap out the layers so I would have to return the whole mattress. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!







Hi mobin.

Welcome to our Mattress Forum. :slight_smile:

While it’s not possible to “diagnose” mattress comfort issues on a forum with any certainty because they can be very complex and there are too many unique unknowns, variables, and complexities involved that can affect how each person sleeps on a mattress in terms of “comfort”, firmness, and PPP or any “symptoms” they experience … there is more about the most common symptoms that people may experience when they sleep on a mattress and the most likely (although not the only) reasons for them in post #2 here that you may find informative.

In some of your pictures, your spine trends upward, in others it’s quite aligned, and in yet others it sinks downward - which to me points to a pillow problem. Upper back issues can point to a pillow that is either too high or too low for your body type or sleeping position and doesn’t maintain the gap between your head and the mattress and keep your head and neck if good alignment over the course of the night which can affect the upper back as well.

Post #2 here also has some other suggestions that would be worth investigating.

NikkiTMU

I am a side sleeper who used to sleep on a firm futon mattress in my 20s. I got shoulder pain from it. I didn’t have the budget for a new mattress and since it was a slat bed I came up with the Idea of finding the slat that was under my shoulder when I slept and removing it from the foundation. It worked pretty well on a futon mattress since it was firm but floppy. I know the experts won’t recommend that but it might be a good quick dirty fix if that’s a slat foundation.